1977. In some novels and plays certain parallel or recurring events prove to be significant. In an essay, describe the major similarities and differences in a sequence of parallel or recurring events in Oedipus the King and The Minority Report discussing the significance of such events. Do not merely summarize the plot.
2003. According to critic Northrop Frye, "Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning." Oedipus the King and The Minority Report are major works in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by those figures contributes to the tragic vision of the works as a whole.
2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Revisit Oedipus the King and The Minority Report and considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the works raise and the extent to which those works offer answers. Explain how the authors's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the works on the whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2011. In a novel by William Styron, a father tells his son that life “is a search for justice.”
Choose a character from Oedipus the King and a character from The Minority Report who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the characters' understanding of justice, the degree to which the characters' search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search for the works as a whole.
2011. Form B. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), novelist Edith Wharton states the following: At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.
Using Oedipus the King and The Minority Report write a well-organized essay in which you describe an “illuminating” episode or moment from each and explain these moments function as a “casement,” a window that opens onto the meaning of the works on the whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
The
Minority Report – Major quotations and dialogue from the film
John
Anderton: [about Witwer's father] What does he think about your chosen line of
work?
Danny
Witwer: I don't know. He was shot and killed when I was 15 on the steps of our
church in Dublin. I know what it's like to lose someone close, John. 'Course,
nothing is like the loss of a child. I don't have any children of my own, so I
can only imagine what that must've been like. To lose your son - in such a
public place like that. At least now you and I have the chance to make sure
that kind of thing doesn't happen to anyone...
John
Anderton: Why don't you cut the cute act, Danny boy, and tell me exactly what
it is you're looking for?
Danny
Witwer: Flaws.
John
Anderton: There hasn't been a murder in 6 years. There's nothing wrong with the
system, it is perfect.
Danny
Witwer: [simultaneously] - perfect. I agree. But if there's a flaw, it's human.
It always is.
Agatha:
Think about all the lives that little girl has saved.
Lamar
Burgess: Think about all the lives that little girl has saved, think about all
the lives she will save, that little girl could have saved Sean.
John
Anderton: [yells] Don't you *ever* say his name!
Arthur:
You used the memory of my dead son to set me up.
John
Anderton: [yells] You used the memory of my dead son to set me up! That was the
one thing you knew would drive me to murder.
Dashiell:
What are you going to do now, Lamar?
John
Anderton: [yells] What're you going to do now, Lamar?
Arthur:
How are you...
John
Anderton: ...going to shut me up?
Dashiell:
I'm sorry, John.
Dr. Iris
Hineman: Sometimes, in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark.
Dr. Iris
Hineman: I call it a gift, for them it was more like a big cosmic joke.
Dr. Iris
Hineman: It's funny how all living organisms are alike...
[she
starts crushing a mutated plant]
Dr. Iris
Hineman: ...when the chips are down, when the pressure is on, every creature on
the face of the Earth is interested in one thing and one thing only.
Dr. Iris
Hineman: [the plant scars her palm] Its own survival.
John
Anderton: No doubt the precogs have already seen this.
Lamar
Burgess: No doubt.
John
Anderton: You see the dilemma don't you. If you don't kill me, precogs were
wrong and precrime is over. If you do kill me, you go away, but it proves the
system works. The precogs were right. So, what are you going to do now? What's
it worth? Just one more murder? You'll rot in hell with a halo, but people will
still believe in precrime. All you have to do is kill me like they said you
would. Except you know your own future, which means you can change it if you
want to. You still have a choice Lamar. Like I did.
Agatha: Is
it now?
Officer
Fletcher: John, don't run.
John
Anderton: You don't have to chase me.
Officer
Fletcher: You don't have to run.
John
Anderton: Everybody runs, Fletch.
Agatha:
Dr. Hineman once said, "The dead don't die. They look on and help."
Remember that, John.
John
Anderton: Agatha...
Agatha:
Sean... He's on the beach now, a toe in the water. He's asking you to come in
with him. He's been racing his mother up and down the sand. There's so much
love in this house. He's ten years old. He's surrounded by animals. He wants to
be a vet. You keep a rabbit for him, a bird and a fox. He's in high school. He
likes to run, like his father. He runs the two-mile and the long relay. He's
23. He's at a university. He makes love to a pretty girl named Claire. He asks
her to be his wife. He calls here and tells Lara, who cries. He still runs.
Across the university and in the stadium, where John watches. Oh God, he's
running so fast, just like his daddy. He sees his daddy. He wants to run to
him. But he's only six years old, and he can't do it. And the other men are so
fast. There was so much love in this house.
John
Anderton: [sobbing] I want him back so bad.
Agatha: So
did she. Can't you see? She just wanted her little girl back. But it was too
late. Her little girl was already gone.
John
Anderton: She's still alive.
Agatha:
She didn't die, but she's not alive.
John
Anderton: Agatha, just tell me, who killed your mother? Who killed Anne Lively?
Agatha: [whispering]
I'm sorry John, but you're gonna have to run again.
John
Anderton: What?
Agatha:
[screaming] RUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
John
Anderton: [his face inches from Agatha's] Where's my Minority Report?
[screams]
John
Anderton: DO I EVEN HAVE ONE?
[moment's
silence]
John
Anderton: [softly] Do I have one?
Agatha:
[whispers] No.
John
Anderton: [to Agatha] Everyday for the last six years I've thought of only two
things. The first is what Sean would look like if he were alive today, if I
would recognize him if I saw him on the street, the second is what I would do
to the man who took him if I ever found him. You're right... I'm not being set
up.
Agatha:
You have to take me home.
John
Anderton: No. You said so yourself. There is no minority report, I don't have
an alternate future. I am going to kill this man.
Oedipus the King by Sophocles - Major quotations from the play
Scene One
"Drive
the corruption from the land, don't harbor it any longer, past all cure, don't
nurse it
in your soilroot
it
out!" (109110)
"Banish
the man, or pay back blood with blood. Murder sets the plague storm on the city."
(114115)
"Pay the killers back whoever is
responsible." (122)
"You pray to the gods? Let me grant your prayers." (245)
"banish this man...never
shelter him, never speak a word to him, never make him partner to
your prayers...Never let the holy water touch his hands, Drive him out, each of
you, from every home. He is the plague, the heart of our corruption,"(270275)
"among the foremost men in daily matters and in dealings with the gods." Line 34
"ungodly pollution" Line 353
"a resident stranger as it seems, but soon to be revealed as a native Theban." Line 451
"blind, though now he sees - and poor, though now he's rich - he'll use stick to guide his steps into another land." Line 454
"he'll be revealed a brother and a father to his children in his house, husband and son to her who gave him birth; wife-sharer and the killer of his father." Line 457
"[it is] not right to think good men, without a reason, bad or bad men good." Line 609
"Time alone can make it clear a man is just while you can know a traitor in a day." Line 613
"You are the curse, the corruption of the land!" (401)
"I
say you are the murderer you hunt." (413)
Scene Two
"Creon, the soul of trust, my loyal friend from the start steals against
me...so hungry to
overthrow me he sets this wizard on me, this scheming quack, this fortuneteller peddling
lies," (438440)
"You, plotting to kill me, kill the king"(24)
"If
you think you can abuse a kinsman, then escape the penalty, you're
insane." (45)
"Laios had the feet of this child bound and pinned. Someone tossed it in a mountain wilderness. So there. Apollo didn't cause this boy to be his father's killer. Laios didn't bear the terror he feared from his son. That's what the words of prophecy defined." Line 717
"send him to the fields, the sheep pastures, so far he couldn't even lay eyes on Thebes." Line 761
"if a man's contemptuous, and goes along with acts and speaks without respect for what is right and doesn't revere statues of gods, then let a sorry fate destroy him - for this perverse pride - since he unjustly reaps rewards, does not respect what's godly." Line 883
"Have you brought us news?" (450)
"Wonderful news" (451)
"Who sent you?" (452)
"The people there, they want to make your Oedipus king of Corinth" (456)
"Polybus was nothing to you, that's why, not in blood." (541)
"What are you saying Polybus was not my
father?" (542)
"You were a gift" (546)
Scene Three
"You, old man, come over here look at me.
Answer all my questions." (1415)
"O
godall come true,
all burst to light! O light now let me
look my last on you! I stand
revealed at last cursed in my
birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down
with these hands!" (9397)
"He unpinned and tore away the golden brooches from the robes which she
was dressed in, raised them up and struck at his own eyeballs, yelling
something like, 'You'll not look on the disgraceful things I've done or have
had done to me. In darkness now you'll look on those I ought not to have seen,
and not know those I yearned to know,'" Line 1268
Oedipus' cloud of darkness is "inescapable, unspeakable, unstoppable,
driven by cruel winds." Line 1314
"to live where time allows, and have a better life than the man who
fathered you." Line 1514
"[Oedipus] knew the famous riddles. He was a mighty king, he was the envy
of everyone who say how lucky he'd been. Now he's struck a wave of terrible
ruin. While you're alive, you must keep looking to your final day, and don't be
happy till you pass life's boundary without suffering grief." Line 1524
