The Importance Of The Minor Characters

The protagonist of a story could be one of the most important factors in any story because the said story turns around the protagonist and it is through him or her that we experience the story. Another very important factor in a story is the presence of secondary characters. A secondary character is one who isn’t the main focus of the story but he or she plays an important role in the whole story. These characters are important because they help us understand the hero of the story through their interactions with them, they add consistency to a story and they permit an author to present certain themes in their story to the audience.

This is the case in Oedipus the king the Athenian play of Sophocles. The tale speaks of Oedipus, the king of Thebes who is cursed to destroy his own father and marry his own mother and how he tries to run from that horrible fate. In the course of this play we see many secondary characters performing important roles such as Tiresias, Jocasta and the shepherd but to better explain their significance in the plot we must focus on two of those characters.

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In the above introduction we speak about an author using secondary characters to highlight many themes in their prose. The secondary characters reflect several themes in Oedipus the King. One of the recurring themes that secondary characters present is the theme of Fate versus free will.

The play uses its characters to present the audience discordance between liberty and actions that were supposed to happen.

Characters like Tiresias the blind prophet help the audience understand these different themes especially the above one. When he is questioned by Oedipus on solutions regarding the plague during the conversation he says “Just send me home. You bear your burdens, I will bear mine. It’s better that way, please believe me.”We can see the clash that exist between free will of a character and actions that where fated to happen. When the prophet tell the main character that they should each bear their own burdens it is an instance where he tries to act against fate by keeping quiet but due to Oedipus insistence on the matter Tiresias finally expresses himself, this is the role fate plays in the story, although the prophet is a very wise person and tries to oppose fate, the fact that he let his emotions of anger control his actions he reveals what has foreseen dooming the main character to his fate.

The former servant of the Laius the shepherd is another secondary character which help breakdown the themes of fate versus freewill. Him taking pity and saving Oedipus when the latter was steal an infant can be seen as an act of freewill as he tries to choose a different path from that which was normally supposed to happen. By sparing the babies life he has an illusion of helping him escape destiny and death instead he was just fulfilling the prophecy. From the way the secondary characters present the themes the author conveys a message of humans being unable to escape their fate no matter how hard they try as we can see our two secondary characters Tiresias and the shepherd trying to influence fate but they end up failing. In addition to that these characters demonstrate another important theme which that of truth.

In many ways we can say Tiresias represents truth. None of his prophecies or predictions ends up being false when he says to the protagonist “Blind who now has eyes, beggar who now is rich, he will grope his way toward a foreign soil, a stick tapping before him step by step.” describing how Oedipus will end up, gouging his eyes out becoming blind and him being a beggar explaining how he will fall from being this great leader to nothing. We see Oedipus searching for this truth throughout the story and therefore go to the shepherd to acquire veracity of his origins. We can see that way the secondary characters are portrayed might have been affected by the mindset of Athenian intellectuals of that time period who started doubting on the powers of gods and oracles and researching for truth. Through the secondary characters Sophocles can reflect this tension. Through Oedipus interactions with many minor characters like Jocasta, Creon, Tiresias and many others. These interactions show us more about the personality of Oedipus and help us the audience to understand him better and also to understand why he takes certain decisions. Take for instance Oedipus and Tiresias Oedipus claims to be insightful and clever as he is able to solve the sphinx riddle he even says 'I'll start again—I'll bring it all to light myself.' He has a vision which is uncover the truth, a truth he cannot perceive while on the other hand Tiresias although being blind is able to clearly see the tragic truth. Oedipus tries to find the truth about the death of Laius and use any means like provoking the prophet and threatening the shepherd he only sees the truth when he remove his own eyes. It is ironic that he is able to see the truth only when he is blind, this shows that even if he had physical sight he was mentally blind. Also his interaction with Creon, the shepherd and even Jocasta show us how determine he is to find the truth and how prideful he is these are the same traits that cause his downfall, By trying to find the truth he discovers how he had already completed the prophecy and he is so prideful that he blinds himself when discovering the truth that he has been searching from the beginning of the play. All the actions carried out by Oedipus can be considered strange in the modern world so it is important to have secondary characters through which we can understand more the motive of the main character.

Furthermore to the point above the secondary characters help to develop the story. For a good tragedy we need a plot that leads into actions and these actions are what are going to cause the tragedy. Many people like Aristotle believe that they can be tragedies without characters but that actions are essential to these kinds of stories. In the case of Oedipus the king the secondary characters are the ones to develop the plot and cause the actions that lead to the tragedy. In the events of the story we see that a shepherd saves Oedipus life and gives him to another kingdom where Oedipus lives another life if the shepherd did not save him the actions of the tragedy will have never happened. Thus the secondary characters are important because they develop the tragedy in the play.

In conclusion we could suggest that one of the reasons why Oedipus the king can be considered a good tragedy is partly because of its secondary characters. They are the one who cause the events and help us understand the mind of the main character Oedipus. There is also the fact that secondary characters can give us totally different point of views than the main character since they are very different from the protagonist most of these characters have an opposite view in that we should leave the past to the past and move on with our lives which is an opposite ideology to Oedipus way of seeing things. This shows that a good plot does not only need a well written protagonist but also well written secondary characters.