Model #2: Stephanie Yoon
The Real Archetype: The Story of the Human Condition
The Book of Job and Oedipus Rex at first seem to be completely different stories. The
Book of Job ends happily, with the Lord restoring Job’s good fortune and then some, with twice
as many sheep and camels, as well as a new batch of children. Oedipus Rex, on the other hand,
does not have a happy ending; Oedipus blinds himself and leaves Thebes as a broken man after
realizing that he killed his father and married his mother. Job seems to be rewarded for seeking
the truth about why the Lord was tormenting him so much, whereas Oedipus is severely
punished for finding the truth of his prophecy. The Book of Job seems to promote the common
proverb, “the truth shall set you free,” while Oedipus Rex seems to support the statement that
“ignorance is bliss.”
However, the stories are not simply polar opposites. The focus of the stories is not about
who gets rewarded or punished, or who gets a happy ending. They are actually both tragedies in
that Job and Oedipus both discover the same sad truth: mere humans are powerless against fate
or the almost arbitrary will of the heavens. Human suffering cannot be explained, nor can it be
prevented. In The Book of Job, Job is “a man of perfect integrity, who feared God and avoided
evil” (5). He does not question God because he has no need to do so; he lives a good life and he
assumes that because he is a righteous man, he will not be punished. Only when God suddenly
takes away everything from him does he start wondering about God’s actions. Without reason or
warning, Job is reduced to nothing, and he is totally helpless to defend himself. He asks God,
“why are you so enraged?” (29) and “what have I done to you, Watcher of Men?” (24). Job is
convinced that God has “not treated [him] justly” (29). And Job is actually correct in his
accusations; it is not fair that God “murders both the pure and the wicked” (28), and “for no
reason he gashes [Job’s] flesh” (28). In fact, the only reason God tormented Job was to satisfy a
bet he made with the Accusing Angel. When Job finally hears from the Voice from the
Whirlwind, Job realizes how small and miniscule humanity is compared to the rest of God’s
universe, and after all that has happened to him, the only explanation for his torment is that he is
“dust” (88).
Oedipus comes to a similar conclusion in Oedipus Rex. He knows all his life that it is his
pre-determined fate to “make love with [his] own mother, shed [his] father’s blood with [his]
own hands” (216). As a result, he tries his best to prevent the prophecy; he runs away from
Corinth, and ends up solving the riddle of the Sphinx and becoming the king of Thebes. Still, no
matter what Oedipus does to try to circumvent his destiny, he is completely defenseless against
his own future—he ends up fulfilling the prophecy through his attempt to escape it, because it is
arbitrarily set for him already, by the gods or by chance. There is no reason why Oedipus is
“godforsaken, cursed by the gods” (239) except that life is “ruled by chance” (215).
In both works, the tragedy of the realization of the impotence of mankind is driven by the
use of dramatic irony. In The Book of Job, the story is told almost in the form of an interrogation
or a trial. As Stephen Mitchell points out, “the more the friends become Job’s accusers, the more
Job becomes the accuser of God.” Yet Job learns in the end of the story that it does not matter if
he is innocent or guilty. Moreover, the reader knows more than Job why God is tormenting him,
which adds to the irony in the story. Job does not know about the bet between the Lord and the
Accusing Angel, and consistently asks what he has done to anger the Lord—even though in
reality, he has not done anything at all. Everything that happens in the story is caused and
controlled by God, not Job.
Sophocles also uses dramatic irony throughout Oedipus Rex to highlight the
wretchedness of Oedipus’ epiphany. When Oedipus first calls a search for the murderer of Laius,
he declares that he “holds the throne that he held then, possess his bed and a wife that shares our
seed” and that he “will fight for him as if he were [his] father” (173), completely unknowing of
the insight of these statements. When the blind prophet Tiresias tells Oedipus that he himself is
the murderer he is searching for, Oedipus flies into a rage and says that “[Tiresias] has lost [his]
power, stone-blind, stone-deaf—senses, eyes blind as stone!” (181). But as Tiresias points out,
Oedipus is “flinging at [Tiresias] the very insults each man… will fling at [Oedipus] so soon”
(181) because Oedipus is “blind to the corruption of [his] life” (183). Furthermore, Oedipus
exclaims that “all [Tiresias] can say are riddles” (184)—and even though Oedipus’ greatness at
solving riddles won him the throne of Thebes, he cannot solve Tiresias’ riddle. While he can
understand the Sphinx’s riddle about man being three things at once, he is unable to see that in
himself. The moment that he finally sees the truth about who he really is brings both “[his] birth
and [his] destruction” (184).
The Book of Job and Oedipus Rex are from very different cultures; one comes from a
monotheistic religion, while the other comes from the polytheistic ancient Greek religion. Yet
they both heavily use irony to illustrate the tragedy of the same truth: we cannot choose our own
destiny, and so our futures are determined by chance. The fact that the futility of the human
condition is addressed in both stories reflects how universal this truth is; eventually we all
understand that humans are miniscule on the scale of the universe.
Model #1: Jack Schluger
Ignorance is Knowledge, Sort of
The first of Tishrei, 5775. It is the first rainy Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year that I
can remember. We didn’t take the scenic seven-block walk to temple down Neponsit Avenue
like we normally do, we drive instead. And while many people are at home enjoying the first day
of a four-day weekend, I am in temple “praying”. Maybe also writing this essay in my head, but
still praying. I can multitask. And while listening to the choir chant, or maybe during the rabbi’s
sermon, I realized that I have no idea. No idea at all about what I think. About life, our purpose,
God. Everything, anything. But I am not ignorant. Ignorance would be to not even know that
there was anything to not know about. But I am not knowledgeable either. That would certainly
contradict having no idea about anything. And I struggled with this. I struggled with the idea of
being between ignorance and knowledge, because ignorance is bliss; but so is knowledge.
Both Job and Oedipus Rex struggle the most when they are between ignorance and
knowledge. Job’s life is going perfectly when he is ignorant, content with his blind faith, with,
“seven sons and three daughters; seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred
yoke of oxen, and five hundred donkeys; and also many slaves” (Mitchell 5). And then God
takes this all away. Only at this point does Job begin to question, because only once he loses
everything is he between ignorance and knowledge. God’s display of power to so quickly change
Job’s life enlightens him just enough so he can realize he ignorant he is. Similarly, only once
Oedipus hears the proclamation from Creon that he must find the murderer of Laius and “banish
the man, or pay back blood with blood,” does he realize his own ignorance surrounding the
circumstances of himself becoming king, and eventually his own fate, prompting him to begin
his quest for the truth.
The battle between ignorance and knowledge is what drives Job to keep questioning, to
persist despite his friends’ advice. Once he leaves his state of ignorance, he must reach a state of
knowledge to be blissful again. It is discontent in Job’s life that causes this in between, a quest
for knowledge. The Job that we meet in the legend is perfectly content with his ignorance until
God destroys his life, giving the Accusing Angle powers only limited by, “just don’t kill him”
(Mitchell 8). And in destroying everything that Job holds fast, the Accusing Angle sparks a quest
for knowledge of God that cannot be tamed.
Oedipus abandons his ignorance for a different reason than Job. Physically, Oedipus’s
and Job differ in their reasons for not being blissful. God makes Job suffer, taking his family, and
then gives him boils and other sicknesses. Oedipus on the contrary is more indirectly unhappy.
He is obligated by his position as King of Thebes to find the murderer of Laius, and until he can
find the murderer, he is going to be dissatisfied. On an emotional level however, their reasons for
agitation are the same: both characters are given a small piece of information, and they cannot be
satisfied until they completely uncover what they have both started.
Both Oedipus Rex and Job are guided to stop their quest for the truth, but both characters
are driven so strongly that they cannot. First, Tiresias warns Oedipus: “I’d rather not cause pain
for you or me. So why this…useless interrogation? You’ll get nothing from me” (Sophocles
177). Oedipus is driven by his obligation as king of Thebes to find the murderer of Laius, and by
his inner discontent, to reach full knowledge of the matter on which he was previously ignorant.
Next, Jocasta, whom he loves, warns him on page 222: “Stop—in the name of god, if you love
your own life, call off this search! My suffering is enough.” Oedipus does not ignore this plea,
because he loves Jocasta as a wife (for now), but rather his drive to find the truth overpowers the
plea. This shows how strong the will to find knowledge is. He is more motivated by knowledge
than by his wife’s suffering. Finally, the Shepard warns Oedipus: “Oh no, I’m right at the edge,
the horrible truth–I’ve got to say it!” to which he replies, “And I’m right at the edge of hearing
horrors, yes, but I must hear!” (Sophocles 230). Here Oedipus shows again that he is not simple
ignoring the warnings because he admits that he is “right at the edge of hearing horrors;” rather,
the strange, uneasy state of being unsure drives him to disregard the warnings and demand the
truth. Again, the desire for knowledge is a stronger motivator than the horrors that Oedipus
knows he will hear.
Job is also advised to stop his quest towards enlightenment. All three of his friends,
Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Namathite leave their own countries to
mourn with Job. However, instead of mourning with Job, they instead insist that it is crazy to
question God, and that God is just and therefore Job is guilty of sin. As Eliphaz the Temanite
says of page 41, “You are undermining religion/and crippling faith in God./Sin has seduced your
mind;/your tongue flaps with deceit.” Eliphaz cannot even begin to comprehend Job questioning
God, so he reasons that Job must be wrong, and must be a sinner. Even when Job cries out, “My
dearest friends despise me;/I have lost everyone I love./Have pity on me, my friends,/for God’s
fist has struck me” (Mitchell 49), Zophar the Namathite responds with, “Haven’t you realized
yet/(How can you be so blind!)/that the sinners joy is brief/and lasts no more than a moment?”
(50). Zophar too has such a strong blind faith in God that it outweighs the cries of one of his
deepest friends. This is because Job’s three friends are still completely ignorant about God. They
are content with their blind faith because they don’t even have any idea that there is any other
way to know God. They are in a state of bliss, but ignorant bliss. On the contrary, Job has
already lost his ignorance and thus he must reach a state of complete knowledge of God, rational
faith, to be blissful again as he was in the legend.
When Job and Oedipus each reach their own states of knowledge, they have opposite
outcomes in terms of material qualities, but they both arrive at the same moral outcome. The
material, physical world is easier to analyze, because it is what we see in everyone else. In this
world, Job gets everything back and then some, while Oedipus loses everything he has ever had,
even his vision. But the moral, mental world is harder to analyze, because we can only truly see
it in ourselves. In this world, Job and Oedipus are the same at the end of their stories. They both
reach understanding and knowledge, abandoning ignorance and lies for wisdom and truth. Job
abandons his blind faith for faith based on his own, personal experience. Oedipus abandons his
life of lies and blurred boundaries, between mother and wife, morality and evil, fate and freewill,
for a life of the truth where Jocasta is his mother, he is evil, and fate decides his life. While the
end of Oedipus the King may seem to destroy Oedipus’s life, that is only the material
interpretation. Morally, Oedipus is free in the end of the play, because he no longer has a web of
lies and deception surrounding his entire life. And while the end of The Book of Job may seem to
have Job back in his ignorant state, accepting God’s seemingly random explanation, and
accepting his “fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels… seven sons and three daughters”
(Mitchell 91); these material tokens of his suffering truly only represent his mental growth to
knowledge, and thus bliss.