Everybody Dance Now

I think I'm the only one without a blog pass this week, awks.

Also, whoever wrote this went a little overboard on thesaurus.com....just sayin'.

p.s. Formatting troubles, just highlight over the white part to see what's written.

Fate and pain – two ideas that manifest interconnected in Oedipus the King. Unavoidable, inescapable and stemming from something much bigger than the self – both fate and pain are ubiquitous and humbling, forces outside mortal control.  Oedipus, since his youth, knew of his fate decreed by the gods and its vehicle of pain: “the god Apollo spurned me, sent me away/ denied the fact I came for,/ but first he flashed before my eyes a future/ great with pain, terror, disaster-“ (Oedipus the King, 869-872). The “greatness” of the “pain, terror, disaster” carries too much weight to be included in the previous line. The linear singularity of these words echo throughout our minds, highlighting the magnitude of their significance: pain-terror-disaster-pain-terror-disaster-pain-terror-disaster… Oedipus at one believes he can outwit his fate, lending layer upon layer of ironies to his arrogant boast: “Now my curse on the murderer…let that man drag out/ his life in agony, step by painful step-/ I curse myself as well… if by any chance/ he proves to be an intimate of our house,/… may the curse I just called down on him strike me!” (Oedipus the King, 279-286). “My”, “I” and “Me”, or in other words haughty Oedipus, attempts to flee by placing spatial distance between “that man”, “he” and “him”, the inevitable murderer fate. We follow the game of cat and mouse with bated breath until we are on the edge of our seats, clinging to the pages until the final showdown that we knew was coming but hoped never would: Oedipus is cornered by fate as “him” and “me” clash. As these two join, Oedipus is left helpless in the face of fate and its harbinger of pain: “Apollo, friends, Apollo-/ he ordained my agonies- these, my pains on pains!” (Oedipus the King, 1467-1468). The repetitions used mirror each other through parallel structure, “Apollo” and “pains” separated by only one word. The chorus laments Oedipus’ fate while entwining the inseparable nature of pain: “But now to hear your story- is there a man more agonized?/ More wed to pain and frenzy? Not a man on earth,/ the joy of your life ground down to nothing” (Oedipus the King, 1331-1333). The word “wed” carries the connotations of a lifelong and binding relationship, parallel to the inescapable nature of Mr. Fate and his muscle: pain. His entire “life” is tangled between the pains that fate bring, and he has been suffocated between these two until they dragged him into nothingness. Yet this relationship does not apply to Oedipus alone; every prophesy and divine dictum places agonizing shackles on mortal agency, making it clear: pain and fate are forever intertwined.