Comparing Grendel and Oedipus Rex :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Parallels between Grendel and Oedipus Rex A messenger hastily arrives at a palace to tell king Oedipus, that his father, Polybus, the king of other town, has died at an old age of natural causes. The messages receptor and his queen, therefore, assume that Oedipus has break loose his mess as told by the oracle at Delphi that he should mar his father and marry his mother. There is reprieve of worry until it is revealed that the man who died was nevertheless Oedipus adoptive father and that Oedipus had indeed once blot outed his father and was married to his mother. Oedipus was non the king of his fate. Pointless accident, not pattern, governs the world, says Grendel, who, as a consequence, adopts an existentialistic stance, explains Frank Magill in vituperative Review of Short Fiction. This point has been expressed in numerous unfavourable papers by various essayists. One whitethorn wonder, however, whether this is the only stylus to interpret an incredibly ambiguous story in which no suspicion is ever clearly answered nor clearly formulated. One may wonder, actually, whether the author meant for his practice to be analyzed in this way at all. The author, toilette Gardner, spins a tale of a monster held viscously to his destiny of an unnatural death. No progeny what Grendel does, his death is predetermined. Though he tries to disprove fate to himself by accept in existentialism, the belief that actions create the future, he never validates that point of view. John Gardners purpose in writing Grendel was to express that the future is completely unavoidable. Grendel may be paralleled to Sophocles Oedipus Rex which describes the story of Laius and Jocasta, the king and a queen of Thebes, who are told by the oracle at Delphi that the fate of their newborn son is to someday kill his father and marry his mother. They count that they can change that destiny by killing the child but their plan backfires when, unannounced to them, the child grows up fa r away and fulfills his destiny by eventually murdering Laius and marrying Jocasta, neither of whom he knows is his parent. Oedipus Rex is analogous to Grendel because in both stories the main character has a fate which is exceptionally clear but he simply does not believe it, quite on the contrary, he believes that his actions will create his future, but he is tragically mistaken.