nings, but endings dependent upon man and his chosen response.These two works strive to achieve similar goals. They each attempt to explain why there is suffering and instruct the reader or spectator in the proper attitude of resignation to fate determined by god. The paths and the ending attitudes put forth by each, is the point of difference. The reader finds these two characters in two similarly fated situations and responding in very similar attitudes. Oedipus complains, ”…he saved my life for this, this kindness – Curse him, kill him! If I’d died then, I’d never have dragged myself, my loved ones through such hell.”(352) While Job echoes, ”Why died I not from the womb?”(42), and “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?”(45).Both works and both characters pursue resignation to the fate they have been handed as the will of god. Oedipus finds resignation by becoming the judgment hand of the god in completing his sad fate. He gouges out his own eyes and explains, “Apollo, friends, Apollo – He ordained my agonies – these pains on my pains! But the hand that struck my eyes was mine."(352). Here the reader sees Oedipus resign himself to an unchangeable punishment for his fated actions. On the other hand, of his fate, Job desires to know how long it will last, but seems to indicate feeling unjustly punished for unknown sins, and lament his fallen state; “O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me…”(51). In this, he relies on the ultimate justice of GodIs not destruction to the wicked? And a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps? If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit, let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know my integrity. (53)The basic difference the reader observes is in the attitude of resignation...
