Comparison of the 3 texts

The three texts that I have read from “As You Like It” by William Shakespeare, “the Sphinx’s riddle” in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and “The Four Ages of Man” by William Butler Yeats have a similarity that is showing the metaphor of human’s life journey. The human life journey is using an imaginative comparison between two unlike items.
In “As You Like It”, the whole life of human is compared to a stage or a theatre where actors on the stage play a different role play to show the different ages of a human’s life. William Shakespeare describes human life is like actors acting on stage also shows that the different ages a human goes through is concrete or can be seen easily because it is a physical process. For instance, we can see clearly from the text the different ages of human: the infant, the whining school-boy, the lover, a soldier, the justice, the sixth age and second childishness where it comes to the end of a human’s life journey, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” I like this text very much because it shows a clear picture of a human’s life journey in a very organized way.
As for “the Sphinx’s riddle” in Oedipus Rex, it also describes the human life journey with different ages metaphorically. At first, it talks about four legs in the morning. Morning shows the young stage of human, fresh, brand new and enthusiastic. The four legs is clearly describes when a human is in a baby stage that crawls. “Two at noon”, shows the middle age of human where he or she walks with two legs. Finally, “three at the evening” shows the old age of a human where he or she needs support by walking with a stick and this makes the number from two to three.
In “The Four Ages of Man”, it shows the process of growing in a human. Initially, it is the body, then heart, mind and lastly God. The poem shows the human growing process in a difficult way, such as “fight” and “struggle” in order to enter into the different phase of human life. It shows a proceeding process where the human fights with body which shows a physical growth, then comes to the heart where it grows from innocence to maturity. Next, he struggles with his thinking until he comes to the end of his life, God comes over to take back his life.