Oedipus may be tragic, but he's not my hero

So, we're reading Oedipus Rex right now in English, and before we read it we read about tragic heroes. Here are some characteristics of tragic heroes, as defined by our book: 

Usually of noble birth
Good, but not perfect, and his fall results from "an act of injustice"
His downfall is his own fault
His misfortune is not wholly deserved
The fall is not pure loss, that is, they gain something before they die
The audience feels some kind of pity for him

Now, I have one really big complaint with Oedipus being a tragic hero:

He hasn't done anything good yet.

Tragic heroes are defined as essentially good, but having a flaw or two. They're imperfect. Oedipus has not done anything that suggests to me he is a good person deep down. He kills five or six men (including his father, but he didn't know), turns on his best friend, and is really happy when the dad who raised him dies. He is selfish, angry, violent, and stubborn. He also refuses to listen to anyone, and assumes the world is out to get him when they're trying to tell him the truth.

We read the Odyssey (well, parts of it) Freshman year, and used Odysseus as a model for a tragic hero. Odysseus has hubris (which is kind of like pride, but not really, according to Mr. Mullins) just like Oedipus, and he is also a little bit unlikable, but they still come across differently to me.

Here's more about Odysseus if you haven't read or don't remember all the way back to Freshman year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus#Journey_home_to_Ithaca

Do you think Oedipus deserves some credit? I might be kind of harsh. Obviously the people who wrote this book think he was a tragic hero, and they know a lot more than I do. We've only read half the play, do you think he is going to change before he dies?

When is it overkill?

In most English classes, especially AP Junior, we were taught to analyze an author's style, but very rarely do we actually talk about whether we like it or not. This article that Mr. Mullins posted a link to on his webpage (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/a-short-defense-of-literary-excess/?src=recg) gives his view on what the best writing is. The author is pro-putting-as-many-words-as-possible-into-a-sentence, as opposed to more simplistic writing styles that may be easier to understand.

This is one of the sentences that this journalist says is "teeming with life"
"Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky." - Angela Carter

Now, the easiest way to write this sentence is something like:
"The sun set over a vast landscape and the wilderness seemed to go on forever."

I'm not trying to say that my sentence is better, but I would like to argue for a middle ground. Not that I know more about English than Angela Carter (whoever that is), but I really don't see the need for all those words. Good writing doesn't always mean more writing. Think about Hills Like White Elephants. It was simplistic, didn't have a lot to it, but it was still good writing because of all that wasn't on the surface.

I think that sometimes writers who use too many words or too much description are just trying too hard. They lose people's interest because it's boring, but also I think it sometimes sounds like they just want their writing to be impressive. Work hard on it, by all means, but don't try to make yourself sound like Shakespeare when you're not. I think that writers shouldn't go overboard, but they should try to use good writing to tell a good story.

Southern Gothic/Flannery O'Connor

I wasn't in class for the discussion of the Flannery O'Connor stories, but I looked up a few things to get a better picture of Southern Gothic style and particularly the story "A Good Man is Hard To Find". This is one of the most interesting things I found:

"This sickening adherence to just about every stereotype of the old South that the grandmother represents is part of what makes her a grotesque character. In fact, every member of the family is grotesque in some way; the children by their over-the-top rudeness and lack of manners, the father by his intense, simmering anger paired with a bright, happy-looking parrot shirt, the mother by her lack of personality or character—and, of course, the Misfit by his complete lack of regard for anything or anyone. This is not a delightful portrait of the south or a southern family—it is a critique."

I didn't feel that each of the characters was "grotesque" at all. The grandmother and the kids were kind of annoying, and the dad just seemed like he didn't want to go on the road trip in the first place. But I didn't feel like, even after reading it through twice, the story was supposed to be dark and creepy all the way through.To me, it wasn't obvious that they were headed down a bad road. For the most part I was unprepared for the horrifying ending to the story.

Also, a lot of the analysis I read had to do with the religious aspect of the story. The grandmother is a Christian, but she's much more concerned with looking like a Christian than acting like one. She gets a little bit more spiritual when she realizes she's about to die and is talking to the Misfit, but overall she strikes me as one of those people who pretends she's Christian because she was raised that way, and doesn't necessarily live a fully Christian lifestyle.


http://english.tjc.edu/engl2333nbyr/o%27connor.htm
http://supersummary.com/component/content/article/23-plot-summary-of-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor?start=4
Here's some more in-depth analysis of the story.

Existentialism

We talked about existentialism for over an hour in English today, and I don't know about you all, but I still don't really get it. The main idea is supposed to be that existentialists determine their own destiny. Here is the definition of destiny:

Destiny (noun): the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events.

How are you going to decide what is already predetermined? If it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
What I think causes confusion is people take inevitability too far. You can't decide not to act on something and just assume destiny will take care of it. Destiny isn't going to take action for you. You can't be destined to win something or do something or accomplish something if you don't work for it. Your "destiny" is to win, do, and accomplish what you have worked for. So in a way, I both agree and disagree with existentialists. You determine what happens to you, but it was already predetermined that you were going to do that.

Here's a link to a further explanation of the existentialist mindset: http://www.thecry.com/existentialism/ 

What do you guys think? I'm obviously not an expert on this at all, and I feel like we didn't really talk about this today in class.