Everyone makes mistakes and has flaws – not even famous celebrities are perfect. With all of the social networking, growth of the internet, and all other media sources, these mistakes by the people we adore are blown out of proportion and shared with the world. In the Ancient Greek Tragic play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, the reader learns about the tragic flaw and downfall of Oedipus. While reading, he/she begins to think about all of the celebrities that have also had a flaw which led to a major downfall. Tiger Woods and Oedipus are very similar in that they were both on top of the world but each had tragic flaws which lead to their downfall and exile from the world that they ruled.
The similarities between the
...se two people are countless. Tiger Woods was the number 1 golfer in the entire world. He was considered by many to be the “king of golf. ” He could do things with a golf ball that no other man could. He won 14 major championships and has 71 other victories on the PGA tour. Forbes announced Woods as the richest sportsman in the world in 2010 saying that he had earned more than 105 million dollars in his career. Not only does he have all of these achievements on the course but he also has many charities and youth projects around the United States.
Tiger Woods was considered to be on top of the golfing world. Oedipus Rex was also on top of the world of Thebes. He was the king and married Jocasta. When Oedipus came to Thebes, he was forced to
answer a riddle from the sphinx that block the entrance to the city and had plagued the city in recent years. Once he correctly answered the riddle, he became the king of the city. Once he took power, many good things happened to the city. First and foremost, the land began to prosper and soon became a powerful city.
During his reign, Oedipus was a well respected and very much liked by all of the people who lived in Thebes. They say, “The higher you go, the harder you fall. ” This quote is a perfectly exemplifies what these two men went through in their life. Tiger Woods was living a perfect life on the outside but what people didn’t know was all of the turmoil that was going on in his life away from golf. What people didn’t know was that Woods was having affairs with many women even though he was currently married and had two children with his wife, Elin Nordegren.
As more stories started to come out about Woods and his possible mistresses, Tiger Woods lost many endorsements from companies like Gillette and Accenture. During all of this, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren officially divorced. This marked the day that the Tiger downfall would begin. Oedipus was also living a near perfect life; he was king of Thebes and the city was prospering very well. Oedipus also had a tragic flaw that led to his downfall.
He was a naive man who felt that if he ran away from the people he thought were his real parents, he could avoid the fate that he would kill his father
and marry his mother. This eventually was proved to be bad logic when he came across some men at a 3 road crossway on his way to Thebes. He killed all of the men except for one who was able to escape. What he didn’t know was that one of the men who he killed was his father, King Laius. Both Tiger Woods and Oedipus faced an exile like no other. Tiger Woods left the entire golf world for about a year and a half while he was getting his life back together.
During this break, he attended multiple rehabilitation centers to help with what he called “an addiction to sexual intercourse,” something that most professionals in that area of work say he did not have. He also attended many counseling sessions to try and solve this issue. When he finally returned to golf in 2010, he was not the same player. He lacked that “edge” that he used to have which made him the best golfer in the game. Woods has now fallen to number 44 in the world golf rankings and some people wonder if Tiger will ever return to the top.
Oedipus talked to many people before he came to the realization that he was truly the one that killed his father. This is important because Oedipus had ordered that the man who killed King Laius was to be exiled to Mount Citheron. Being the honest man that he was, Oedipus was exiled to Mt. Citheron which meant that he was no longer king of Thebes. Many people in the modern world still flaws and downfalls similar to that of
Oedipus. Tiger Woods is just one example that makes this statement true. So I leave you with one thought to remember. Count no man happy until he dies free from pain at last.
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