SAMPLE FOR YOUR SECOND PAPER

I've tried writing the assignment to give you the idea how I would attack at least one of the options. The essay is actually almost 1,500 words but hey, I'm an English professor! I hope this gives you at least the "tone" of what I am hoping for. Note that, while I do refer to things personal, they are always tied directly to the play and quotes from the play. I try  hard, and so should you, not to leave the literature aside and just talk about myself! 

If I were to compare myself to the characters in the plays, I would have to say that on good days, I'm Oedipus. To compare myself to Oedipus, I'd have to include the second play, Oedipus at Colonus. In my childhood I was informed of a terrible curse I had inherited: my allergies and asthma, which I was told condemned me to be "sick David." I would always be a burden, unable to live a useful and vital life. It took me at least half my life to learn the truth completely about that curse, and then, devastated in a dozen ways, I was able to come to some peace, just as Oedipus did by the end of the second play.

            I was born into a family which, unknown to me as a child and even well into my adult life, was itself cursed with numerous physical complaints which would combine in me to be my own curse. Like Oedipus, my father (and his father) passed down allergies, stomach disease, illnesses which seemed destine to ruin my life. Like Oedipus, I lived a comfortable life, unaware of my true destiny and content with my identity as the weak son of a man I personally regarded as well and strong man. My father hid the truth about his own (and therefore my) curse from me. He never told me he (for that matter his own father) was suffering with a condition that would shape my own life. He was probably quite right in not telling me, because it wouldn't be until much later in life that I learned the true nature of my suffering--something he himself could never have foreseen. Oedipus declared, "The truth must be known." I, too kept searching for a way not to feel sick and troubled all the time. He consulted fortune tellers. I went to doctor after doctor, first accompanied by my doting mother, then on my own.

            The results of my quest to outrun my fate were, predictably, mixed. Like Oedipus, I didn't like the answers I was being given. My curse--to be "sick David" and so never rise to the greatness I saw in my own father--dove me on. As a child I got shots twice and even three times a week. As an adolescent I took so many pills I rattled when I walked, until one "seer" gave me a magic green capsule and told me it was "the cure." Like Oedipus, I grabbed at the chance to be free of my fear. The capsule was cortisone and it lead to a seventeen-year dependency on anabolic steroids which nearly blinded and killed me. I took so much of the poison for so long I nearly died. Like Oedipus, my desire to be free of a curse that had been whispered to me (you'll never truly be your father's son) drove me to work one, two, three and even four jobs. Fueled by the kind of unnatural energy, even rage that Oedipus displayed, I blindly pursued "greatness." The doctors and their medicine, like Tireseas' with his words, pumped me up. At thirty-three I reached a crisis, unable to tolerate the medicine (prednisone) I was taking, I withdrew completely and nearly died, but emerged a year later on a new path, like Oedipus, toward finally understanding myself and my destiny.

            I was not fully cured. A person doesn't always out-run fate; rather, I had to embrace myself, my flaws, and learn to accept and live with them. My eyes were ruined by the steroids and it took surgeries and much more suffering before I could be sure I wouldn't be completely blind. It took me years and alternative medicine (Chinese herbs, acupuncture, and chi gong) before I found away to live in the body I had been given. But wandering on my own through life--without my mother or father to tell me what to do--like Oedipus, I realized that there was a larger scheme of things I had to fit into than even what I already knew. At Colonus, Oedipus learns that life isn't nor was meant to be what it seems. Ordinary people live ordinary lives. Those whose fate is to look more deeply learn that there is a further if hidden meaning. The lesson Oedipus states upon his arrival in Colonus is: "I am taught by suffering to endure, And the long years that have grown old with me, And last not least, by true nobility…When time had numbed my anguish and I felt My wrath had all outrun those errors past" (http://www.online-literature.com/sophocles/oedipus/2/). He has suffered long but he has some inner peace. He thinks the lesson is complete, his suffering over. For me, my increasing acceptance and ability to live well despite what others would have called the curse of my ill health, still didn't bring me peace.  And indeed Oedipus still had one last major obstacle to overcome. For him, it was to see (in his own blindness, now the prophet) that his brother-in-law and even his own sons would not be at peace. For me, it was to learn that my own brother was more the source of my suffering than any illness my father had left to me.

            Just when I thought I had found some sanctuary in my middle years, some balance if not true "health" so that I could make my way physically, I found I was still haunted by deep, dark psychological demons. Again, like Oedipus, I consulted doctors, our modern "oracles." A true shaman is hard to find but, again like Oedipus later in his life, I found one truly helpful person. Theseus, who let Oedipus rest long enough to open the last pages of the truth, declared, "If thou keep'st my hest Thou shalt hold thy realm at rest" (http://www.online-literature.com/sophocles/oedipus/2/). He knew and told Oedipus that those who try to do the right thing, and who stand by that intention, deserve to have some peace in the end. For me, I found a friend and oracle in the person of a hypnotherapist who helped me to understand the last piece of my own fate's puzzle. I did not see until well into my own life, that my brother (like Oedipus' own son Polyneices) was the source of great evil done on me. All through my earliest childhood, my brother, it seems, had brutalized me; even tried to kill me. Much of what I and others thought was allergies, poor physical health, in fact was the result of beatings, strangulations, fearsome verbal attacks by my own brother, perpetrated on me in secret. Or, he would act out his rage against me (and the world) in front of others who somehow were unable to stop his attacks.

            All my life I was sick. All my childhood I heard my mother say "You will get better." In my mind, I thought that meant I was bad, and I must strive to be "good" or indeed "better." Then, with a clap of thunder I realized I was not bad, I was a victim of a fate I could never have avoided. I had found my way to a kind of peace--better health--but until I saw the final pieces in place, I couldn't ever make a true recovery. Oedipus has to utter his final truths to Polyneices even if his son is incapable of grasping them. He tells his son, as I could finally tell my brother: "Nothing is here for tears; it must be borne By me till death, and I shall think of thee As of my murderer; thou didst thrust me out; 'Tis thou hast made me conversant with woe" (…sophocles/oedipus/2/). Until the devil's name is spoken no exorcism is possible. The son (and my brother) may deny, may complain, may even rage more, but the truth has to be told. So by naming my attacker I was finally able to allow myself some peace. I felt I understood my fate better. One's ill health is not one's fault. Rather, it is the challenge given to be overcome, and to the extent one can find a way to live with it, that is the extent to which a person has succeeded. I live pretty much without doctors, medication or even my mother telling me that I will someday be "better." Now I live knowing that others like my brother who conspired to kill me, as dangerous as they are, also are not my fault. It's a dangerous world and a person has to learn to navigate through it. I don't blame myself anymore for what fate or some little bastard did to me. Rather, I'm living day to day with what life is left. Perhaps I, like Oedipus, will eventually come to rest among at least a few understanding family and friends with whom we can "in kind earth … sleep [our] long last sleep" (…sophocles/oedipus/2/).