Oedipus and Brighton Beach Memoirs

In the play Brighton Beach Memoirs, the eldest son, Stanley reminds me a lot of Oedipus himself in the play Oedipus by Sophocles. In the story, Stanley seems to subtly think he is invincible by the few situations he gets himself into throughout the play. First off, he gets fired from his job, and refuses to write the apology letter to his boss that was requested in order to keep his job. On page 27, his brother Eugene asks, "...Are you going to write the letter?" to where Stanley responds, "...No!(Simon27). Stanley seems to think, although he is able to fix the situation that he created, he is almost too good to do so, giving off a sort of cocky feel to Stanley's personality. Another thing he gets himself into later on in the play, is his gambling issue. Although his intentions were good, and his heart was in the right place, Stanley lost his 17 dollars to gambling. "In a poker game. I lost it gambling(Simon82)." His reasoning was that he wanted to be able to get more money, and since he seemed to be good at it when he did it on lunch and earned pennies, dimes, etc, he thought he could earn some extra cash to help the family since his father, Jack, had just recently had a heart attack, and was not able to take as good care as he used to. All of those pennies, dimes, and quarters Stanley won seemed to create a boastfulness in Stanley, thinking he could win more to help his family. Stanley reminds me of Oedipus because when things like this seem to go wrong, even though Oedipus' situation is significantly worse, they both just up and left. Oedipus stabbed his eyes out and ran away from his mother, and wife who was now dead, and Stanley ran away from his family as well. They both have very cocky personalities, but also seem to not be able to deal with the consequences of that very well. When something goes wrong in life, running away, keeping quiet, or lying about it is the wrong way to take care of the situation, but for Oedipus and Stanley it seemed to be the best route for them, lucky for Stanley, he had a family to come back to who were willing to take him back in, despite the loss of money due to gambling, Oedipus, on the other hand, was not so lucky.