Do you have an answer?

During the discussion of Hamlet in the class today, I realized one flaw that Oedipus has. He has too much confidence, and I think that’s what portrays the United States in the 20 and 21st centuries. Professor Baldwin randomly points at people during the class and asks them for an answer to each question. Usually, people don’t have an answer. For instance, today, I was asked a question: “What is the mother like with the uncle, in Hamlet” and all I could say was “I didn’t read the text before”. Professor Baldwin responded to my response saying “don’t give me that I-don’t-know thing”.
This is how America is. You would go to a job interview, and never say “I don’t know” because that is the last answer that they expect you to come up with, and they don’t want it either. In one of the discussions last class, we had a talk about surviving in America. To survive and get hired in America, you might not know how to do anything, but you have to be lying, or pretending with confidence.
What does Oedipus do? He would pretend like he has a solution for the plague in Thebes. He does so in the end, but he never had a clear solution. He solves the problem without really intending to do it that way. But, this arrogance and confidence of his seems to be a core value of him, and America too, for putting him at the top of his social ladder up to that point of the story.