Comparison :Hamlet & Oedipus Rex

Tragedy can occur no matter what one does to try to prevent it. Whether one tries to act to avoid a tragedy, or does not act to avoid it, tragedy will happen anyway. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to avoid tragedy by running away from it, but it does not work; in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet also tries to avoid tragedy, but he does it by not acting on the task assigned to …

…of action. The two attempts to try to avoid tragedy, similar in themselves only in their goal, are extremely different in how they actually come about, with Oedipus’ seemingly random and spontaneous actions to Hamlet’s constant meditation on whether it is right for him to kill for vengeance. So one can see from these two plays that when tragedy is meant to pass neither your actions nor your inactions will lessen it’s sting.