Maladies Failed Saviors: Sophocles' "Oedipus Term Paper

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Mr. Kapasi and the Dases are all Indian, but in the interpreter's eyes, Mr. And Mrs. Das are foreigners because they dress and speak like Americans. Mina Das sees Kapasi not as a romantic partner, as he desires her to see him as, but as a kind of romantic confessor, who will wash her clean of her sins, much as the citizens of Thebes see their king.

Eventually, when Oedipus' unintentional sin of marrying the queen of Thebes and killing the former king is revealed to the city, the citizens realize that Oedipus is not the great man they hoped he would become, and their illusions are shattered. Oedipus' own illusions about himself as a wise and saving figure of the city are shattered, as he must obey the banishment he laid down for the person who brought the plague upon the city. Mrs. Das must also come to terms with the fact that confessing to Mr. Kapasi will not ease her of the guilt she feels that her husband did not father her children, and Mr. Kapasi must realize he is not the object of her adoration.

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Thus, both stories end with the main protagonists, Oedipus and Kapasi, becoming fallen idols. Mina Das, however, is a fallen idol as well. Mr. Kapasi lets the American address she gave him float into the breeze. Although Oedipus is a Thebean, he ends the story as a banished man from his childhood birthplace, and likewise Mr. Kapasi, although he is included in pictures of the Das vacation, chooses not to see those pictures or ally himself with Mrs. Das. Like Oedipus too, he must realize that he is not a great person, an interpreter of maladies, but merely an ordinary man with no great wisdom to offer. The only thing he can do to heal the Das family's wounds is to remove himself from the situation.

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