The playwright, Sophocles, presents a prideful protagonist in his Greek Tragedy Oedipus Rex. Another playwright, one who lived during the Elizabethan Age, William Shakespeare, introduces a similar leading character in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Both of these dramatists portray tragic heroes in comparable and contrasting ways, despite their differing time periods.
These catastrophic characters, Oedipus and Macbeth, resemble each other throughout their own plays. The beginning of two plays start with the men saving their own countries. Oedipus solves the Sphinx’s riddle, which provides freedom to the captive people; comparably, Macbeth fights the invading Irish army, defending his nation from harm. The two men become king of their land by committing regicide. After Oedipus kills the king he replaces him on the throne; likewise, Macbeth seeks out to slaughter his king so that he becomes the ruler. The Kings pollute their kingdom with themselves as the poison, but in the…show more content… Fate follows the assassins, but the men’s responses toward their dictated future differ. Oedipus runs away from his destiny to kill his father and marry his mother unlike Macbeth, who eagerly sprints toward the prophecy for him to become king. Even though Oedipus and Macbeth kill their kings, their consciousness varies. Oedipus kills four men, unaware that one is his father and the king, and conversely Macbeth knowingly murders the sleeping king in an innocent state. The truth about the men remains hidden, and they contrast in their approaches to change or keep it concealed. The digger for truth, Oedipus, tries to disclose the murderer of the former king different from the burier of truth, Macbeth, who attempts to keep the name of the king’s killer deep enough to so that no one can unbury the reality. They oppose one another in the way they respond to their fated future, commit regicide, and handle