You will prepare and submit a term paper on Who Am I: A Question for the Ages. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length.

You will prepare and submit a term paper on Who Am I: A Question for the Ages. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length. Using these three stories, the development of self-definition will be traced through each story’s main character, Oedipus, Willie Loman, and Tom respectively.

At the beginning of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is very proud to tell people that he is the man who solved the riddle of the Sphinx and even prouder to think that he has thwarted his prophesied destiny. His pride in himself is seen at the very beginning of the story when he sees his people gathered around him as if he were a god. His response to their superstitious behavior is “What means this reek of incense everywhere, / From others, and am hither come me, / I Oedipus, your world-renowned king” (4-8). His pride in his role is evident in the words he speaks in which he seems to be almost condescending to them for appealing to other forces than himself in their burning of incense to cloud the air. Throughout the remainder of the action, Oedipus’ personality clearly reflects a continued pride and a determination to force things to go his way. When Oedipus received his own prediction that he was doomed to kill his father and marry his mother, he was determined to avoid this fate by taking his future in his own hands. As a result, he left his homeland in Corinth for the further realm of Thebes. He experiences the typical dangers while on his travelers, meeting with strangers and being involved in a fatal battle in which only the other side lost, and encountering a seemingly unanswerable riddle delivered by the Sphinx. When he is able to solve the riddle of the Sphinx.