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Both men suffer, and both men have to continue living with that suffering, while losing the people they care about the most. That tragedy is even more apparent in Dove's work, with the misunderstanding about Augustus and what he managed to do in the plantation house. His fate seems more tragic, somehow, because he is being commended for something that he did not do, and is being treated as a hero when in fact he is nothing of the sort. He will have to live up to that reputation in the slave community and it is clear that he will not be able to continue that pretense for very long.
In conclusion, both of these plays use the central theme of incest for different purposes. Dove uses it to illustrate the enduring images of slavery, relationships between blacks and whites and how they were skewed, and how slaves were abused and dismissed in plantation life. The incest between owners and slaves is the heart of this tragedy, and it helps the reader see how abusive the relationships really were. Sophocles, on the other hand, used it as an example of one of the worst behaviors imaginable, to show the power and presence of the gods, and...
The stories are quite similar in very many ways, but their purposes are very different. Sophocles wants to teach a moral lesson to ancient Greeks, while Dove wants to show a time in American history that is not easy to forget or condone. They both serve their purposes very well, and with differing methods and results, but both plays make the reader think, so they do achieve their goals.
References
Bloom, Harold, ed. Black American Women Poets and Dramatists. New York: Chelsea House, 1996.
Carlisle, Theodora. "Reading the Scars: Rita Dove's the Darker Face of the Earth." African-American Review 34.1 (2000): 135.
Dove, Rita. "The Darker Face of the Earth." American Theatre Nov. 1996: 33+.
The Darker Face of Earth. 2nd ed. Brownsville: Storyline P, 1996.
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