Destruction Through Excessive Pride

In the story of Oedipus Rex, Laius and Jocaste are king and queen of Thebes, and the parents of Oedipus. Laius was warned by an oracle that he would be killed by his own son. Determined to prevent his fate, Laius pierced and bound together the feet of his newborn child and left him to die on a lonely mountain. The infant was rescued by a shepherd and given to Polybus, king of Corinth, who named the child Oedipus and raised him as his own son. Oedipus did not know that he was adopted, and when an oracle proclaimed that he would kill his father, he left Corinth. On his way from leaving, he met and killed Laius, believing that the king and his followers were a band of robbers, there fulfilling his prophecy. Oedipus arrived at Thebes, where he defeats the Sphinx and marries his mother.

Throughout this play Oedipus shows too much pride and arrogance toward everyone that he comes across. He always has to have the last word. He does not care what effect the outcome of his words and actions will later have on others. In many ways President Bush and some with Adolf Hitler do the same in their ways of leading things.

The excessive pride or arrogance of an individual, proved to be an omnipresent theme in Oedipus Rex. On many occasions throughout the play, Oedipus, the main character who later has a tragic downfall, speaks in an arrogant fashion. Early on in the play Oedipus addresses a crowd of people: "I, Oedipus who bear the famous name." His self glorification and constant reminders of his brave feats illustrate excessive pride in himself. Like Oedipus, President Bush displays great populist enthusiasm in his devoted speeches, but primarily serves wealthy investors who subsidize his election campaigns and share with him their comfortable lifestyle. As he himself jokes, he treats these individuals at the pinnacle of our economy as his true political "base."

When confronting the seer, Teiresias, Oedipus loses his temper and attempts to talk down to him, saying "Wealth, power, craft of statesmanship! Kingly position everywhere admired!"(Scene i) He also mocks Teiresias by reminding him of how it wasn't he the soothsayer who solved the sphinxes riddle but himself, Oedipus. "What help were you to these people? Her magic was not for the first man who came along: it demanded a real exorcist..."(Scene i). Oedipus used language that reflected his feelings of superiority. Bush, also like Hitler, takes pride in his status as a "War President," and his global ambition makes him perhaps the most dangerous president in our nation's history, a "rogue" chief executive capable of waging any number of illegal preemptive wars. He fully acknowledges his willingness to engage in wars of "choice" as well as wars of necessity. Sooner or later this choice will oblige universal conscription as well as a full-scale war economy.

Another prominent downfall to Oedipus' excessive pride is thoughtless behavior resulting in negative consequences. One could argue that every tragic event that befell Oedipus was brought on by his own rash actions. Bush and his associates emphasize the ruthlessness of their enemies in order to justify their own. Just as Hitler cited the threat of communist violence to justify even greater violence on the part of Germany, the bush team justified the invasion of Iraq by emphasizing Hussein's crimes against humanity over the past twenty-five years. However, these crimes were for the most part committed when Iraq was a client-ally of the U.S. Our government supplied Hussein with illegal weapons and poison gas, and there were sixty U.S. advisors in Iraq when these weapons were put to use . U.S. aid to Iraq was actually doubled afterwards despite disclaimers from Washington that our nation opposed their use. President Reagan's special envoy Donald Rumsfeld personally informed Hussein of this one hundred percent increment during one of his two trips to Iraq at the time. He also told Hussein not to take U.S. disclaimers seriously.

When confronted with a decision, Oedipus frequently chose to rush ahead into the unknown without giving any thought to the possible outcome. In several cases he made poor choices and as a consequence he paid the price. In the case of his hasty bid for justice in Scene I, his words of judgment reflected his future fate: "As for the criminal, I pray to God...whether it be a lurking thief, or one of a number...I pray that that man's life be consumed in