Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex is the father of all tragedies and rightly so. This poem is depressing! The "Big Question" deals with what allows some people to overcome obstacles and others to fail. In this case, the obstacle was fate and Oedipus Rex was not able to overcome his sick fate. This story adds an interesting twist to my question. According to the Greek culture, humans are victims of fate. Fate cannot be overcome, it is a force that deals out complete control over a human life. So are there some things that cannot be overcome, no matter the character of the person? In the Greek mind, that is a definite yes. A common part of all tragedies is the tragic flaw of the hero and this leads to the eventual downfall of the hero. Fate may be unconquerable, but Oedipus was flawed, therefore keeping him from rising to Fate's challenge. Oedipus was metaphorically blind to the truth and this led to his terrible ending. So if Sophocles were to answer my question, I imagine he would say that the refusal to see the truth keeps people from even rising to meet the challenge.

Atonement and the Question

Atonement is an interesting book to apply to this question. adversity is thrown at every single main character in the book and none of them escape it unscathed. Briony falsely accuses Robbie of raping her cousin Lola and this act send him to jail. But he keeps in contact with his love Cecilia and this is what helps him survive through jail and then the war. What helps Robbie overcome his adversity is the love between him and Cecilia. It's an interesting concept that is very different from the Odyssey. It's the idea that an outside force, love, can assist in overcoming adversity. Something outside of your own being can give you the strength to over come obstacles. The people without this force backing them, fail. Like Lola. She was raped but she allowed her cousin to take control and in the end she did not overcome her adversity, but rather she ended up marrying her rapist. So in this book, the idea is that you cannot overcome adversity alone and that love will always pull you through. Love is a powerful emotion and literature has often portrayed it as a savior.

The question and the Odyssey

My question is this:
In the face of adversity, what causes some people to fail and others to prevail?

This is a universal question that can never be fully answered. What are those personal characteristics that cause some people to survive adversity with grace and for others to fail? Is it luck of the draw? Do some people have greater strength and ability than others? Or is it all fate that allows one person to become the hero in adversity and the other to become the villain? This question may be unanswerable, but it is worth pursuing to better understand the human condition.

In the Odyssey, the main character Odysseus faces much adversity on his long journey home and prevails over all. Why he is the one to survive is obvious through an understanding of the text and the Greek culture. Odysseus is blessed with incredible brawn and wit, all of which he relies on heavily to help him escape from one disaster to the next. He is a step above his men because of his superiority and hero-status. His shipmates fail in the face of adversity. On the island of Kirke, they are easily swayed into her power and she turns them into pigs. Why are these men different than Odysseus? The Greeks elevated him to a higher level than common people so in the eyes of their culture would they say that you must be a hero to prevail over adversity? That would leave the rest of us to be on the level of his shipmates whom allow adversity to take their lives. It's not a very comforting thought. Just like in the Odyssey, it is a common theme throughout literature that hero's are the ones who prevail over adversity. Look at Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and Wonderwoman. All of these characters are similar to Odysseus in the sense that they are greater than the common man and this allows them to succeed. I'm not sure I buy into this theory. Every day people prevail over adversity every day by simply surviving.