Compare and contrast Oedipus Rex Essay

Compare and contrast Oedipus Rex and Faustus as tragedies.  The two plays Oedipus Rex and Faustus are both tragic  plays. Both of the plays end with the main character losing their  life, and actually even their afterlife. But as tragedies the two  plays have some similarities and some differences. The characters  themselves are different, and they both want different goals out of  each their own lives. Oedipus Rex and Faustus are two tragedies that  compare and contrast in many ways. The two main characters of the plays Faustus and Oedipus  Rex are very different from each other. Faustus, the main character in  Faustus, is not trying to save any civilizations like Oedipus is.  Faustus is really trying to make himself a better person by learning  black magic. He wants to learn evil to make himself more powerful as  a person. He signs his soul over to the devil in exchange for  twenty-four years of service by Mephistophilis. Greed is the main  reason for the fall of Faustus. He chose his own destiny; he knew  that when he signed that contract his soul belonged to the devil. Oedipus on the other hand, did not really have much of a choice in his  fate. He was pretty much damned from the beginning. He was  prophesized to kill his father and marry his mother, so his father and  mother tried to change fate. But as the story goes, the prophecy came  true. All Oedipus wanted to do was stop the plague from going through  his city. But it ended up that he was the cause, not the solution.  His eternity was not lived out in hell, but spent exiled from Thebes. Oedipus did not choose his fate as Faustus did. The characters of the  two plays both suffered in the end, but one chose his and one had to  live with his prophecy.  Smith 2  The plots of the two plays are different from each other also. The  plot of Oedipus Rex is for Oedipus to find out why the plague has  struck his town, and how to get rid of it. But the plot ends up  turning into what was prophesized to his parents a long time ago.  Oedipus ends up finding out that he has married his mother and that he  has killed his father. The whole play is a tragedy. There is no  comic relief in it, as in Faustus with his practical jokes. In  Oedipus the plot revolves around the fate of one man. In Faustus the  plot revolves around other people as well. There are other subplots  in the play not just the plot with Faustus. Faustus and  Mephistophilis go about causing trouble throughout different cities,  really trying to cause evil wherever they go. In Oedipus, there is no  other trouble in the play, just the problem with Oedipus killing his  father and marrying his mother. The plots have nothing in common  except how the end. In the end of Faustus, Faustus must spend all of  eternity in hell. His soul now belongs to the devil. In the beginning of the play he did not believe in life after death, I bet he  is hitting himself on the head now. In the end of Oedipus Rex,  Oedipus cuts his own eyes out and gets exiled out of Thebes. He  spends the rest of his life with out a home. The ultimate tragedy  really, he just got stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both of the plays are different from each other, but both  end tragically. One of the similarities of the play is seen at the  end of Oedipus Rex when the Chargos basically says that even the  greatest of men can crumble to ruins; all humans are subject to  suffering and pain. This theme is true in both plays. Seen at the end  of Faustus, when Faustus was trying to stop the clock. Even the  greatest of men can crumble to ruins.