Placing structure to concepts we give meaning to is a very Nietzschean idea. Through doing so, we grow the concepts and achieve a more likeness to the content. Jakobson from “Linguistics and Poetics” attempts to reduce the different facets of language using their inherent functions. He first gives meaning to the six factors of language first: addresser, context, message, contact, code, and the addressee. The addresser and the addressee are quite the opposites, where the addresser is where a message originates to give to the audience, who receives the message. The message is the content, text, or the idea that is being passed over, and it links the addresser and the addressee together. The code is where the message gains its meaning through rules, as it will be encoded by the addressor to be decoded be the addressee. The context is similar to the setting of the message and must be obviously communicated over through the message. Finally, the contact is what allows for the addresser and the addressee to maintain a connection together to further communications.

Each factor of language relate to what Jakobson calls a function. The poetic function of language is where the message places emphasis upon itself due to its more obscure message. It is meant for the addressee to delve into the syntagmatic and associative relationships between the words so that the core message is unlocked. However when the emphasis of the message is placed on the addressor or the addressee, the emotive and conative functions, respectively, are brought forth. The emotive function relies on the addressor to pass on their emotions and feelings to the message. In the case of the conative function, the message garners a response from the addressee, placing emphasis on them to maintain the communication channel. Similarly, the phatic function has the sole reason to maintain the contact, yet carries absolutely no substance. The referential function corresponds to the context; who and what the message is referring to. Finally, the metalingual function ties in with the code where they place emphasis on sentence structure and the specific words used. Jakobson created all factors and their underlying functions seek to build a structure of language that would help us further our relationships to each other.

Humans, unlike animals, fight their most primal selves in order to pursue their full potentials as intelligent beings. In the story of Oedipus Rex, the protagonist, Oedipus, is told a prophecy that he would kill his father, and lay with his mother. However, by the time that he is told the prophecy, it has already started. Originally, it was his birth parents, the Theban royalty, that heard the prophecy. Instead of properly teaching their children, the parents had sent for the killing of the child. However, the shepherd tasked with doing so could not carry out the act and gave the boy to the Corinthian royalty, who could not bear a child at all. Thus, when the Corinthian prince, Oedipus, heard of the prophecy, he vowed to never to return to Corinth in order to prevent it from ever occurring. Instead, he headed toward Thebes, where on the road there, he had inadvertently killed his paternal father, solved the sphinx’s riddle, and marries Queen Jocasta, who he doesn’t know is his maternal mother. Such a story is held in high regards, even in modern times, because of Oedipus’s own revulsion to the act. In trying to prevent the prophecy from occurring, all characters, even Oedipus’s biological parents, helped in the fulfillment of the prophecy.

It can be argued that if the Theban royalty had instead raised the child correctly, then the prophecy would never have fulfilled. But the story should not be consumed literally, but metaphorically. The prophecy is the symbol for the animalistic aspect of humans, where humans are in a constant struggle to repress their ‘natural’ desires to strive for intelligence. The common man is Oedipus, who fights their primal self to stay a human. Even though he tries his hardest to prevent the prophecy from occurring,  it occurs regardless. I believe that this is a representation for the fact that humans will inevitably lose to their animalistic selves. While Oedipus was aware of his true feelings, it is that same awareness, that unknowingly guides him to his tragedy. That awareness is the ego. The feelings that he is unaware of and declines so much is represented by the id. These subconscious feelings are in a tug of war between the ego, and it is up to the superego to be the law. The superego is generally represented by the father figure, which he had inadvertently killed while pondering the prophecy. As a result of the killing of his law, it was inevitable that he would regress to his primal self and sleep with his mother.

The story of Oedipus Rex is the story of the common human man fighting against his animalistic self to strive for intelligence. Even though Oedipus lost his battle, his hard fought battle is what makes the story stand out from the others of the genre. Freud, in the Interpretation of Dreams, compares Oedipus’s story to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Freud writes that the main difference between the two is that Hamlet is, “built up on Hamlet’s hesitations over fulfilling the task of revenge that is assigned to him; but its text offers no reasons or motives for these hesitations and an immense variety of attempts at interpreting them have failed to produce a result.” In Hamlet’s specific case, he ignores the vengeance for his father because he wanted to get rid of his law and superego, which was his father. It only takes his mother’s death where he fulfilled the vengeance, even after having many chances between his two parents’ deaths. His love for his mother is more pronounced than his love for his father. Because his uncle had gotten in the way of Hamlet’s process of loving his mother, he had completed the revenge. Hamlet’s story is one of repression, unlike Oedipus’s great battle. Although both lost to their animalistic selves, Oedipus’s story reigns supreme because readers value a human who would fight their very natures.