Oedipus Blog#2

Oedipus: "No more nor less than you? Than nothing then."(pg55) ~Roche
Oedipus: "My father- how can my father equal nothing? You're nothing to me!"(Lines1115-1116) ~Fagles

Roche and Fagles both handle the diction and syntax of the lines of the play very differently at times. For example, in this line said by Oedipus, Fagles makes the situation sound more dramatic by adding an exclamation point at the end of the line. This, in my opinion makes the line seem more modern, as if in today's world people will say the line "You're nothing to me" in a harsh and loud tone. On the other hand, Roche uses the same line as if in that century, people would just state it without having any significance. Roche's line of "Than nothing then" is so plain and I when I first read it I was thinking what is the nothing that he's talking about, but when I read Fagles, I understood in a heart beat. I noticed that Fagles uses much more exlamations in his modernized version which makes it more dramatic and which is why I like his version better.