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Oedipus Rex

Oedipus the King

Oedipus the King is a great play whose qualities of inscrutability and of pervasive ironically quickly come to complicate any critical discussion().   Sophocles' play Oedipus the King fits into a tragedy because it recounts the events in the life of Oedipus Rex, arouses pity and fear in the audience, and ends in an unhappy catastrophe (Harmon).

Oedipus' life began in Thebes as the son of Laius and Jocasta.   Apollo had placed a curse on Oedipus.   The cursed said that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother.   Since Laius and Jocasta were afraid of the curse, they sent Oedipus away into the woods with a shepherd to be left to die.   The shepherd should not bare to leave an infant in the woods to die, so he gave the infant to another man who took him to Polybus and Merope, king and queen of Athens, since they were not able to have kids.

Oedipus grew up and learned that he was cursed.   He left Athens believing that Polybus and Merope were his parents.   He thought that if he moved away the curse would not come true.   Oedipus left Athens and during his travels he ended up killing Laius and became the king of Thebes and married after answering the riddle.

After Oedipus became King his kingdom was hit by a plague and the only way to stop the plague was to avenge Laius' death by executing or exiling his killer.   Oedipus' brother-in-law Creon tells him to ask the prophet, Tiresias, who the killer is.   Tiresias tells Oedipus that he does not want to know who the killer is, but Oedipus keeps on Tiresias until he tells Oedipus that,

"I charge you, then, submit to that decree you just laid down: from this day onward speak to no one, not these citizens, nor myself.   You are the curse, the corruption of the land."(Sophocles 833)

At first Oedipus thinks Creon put Tiresias up to say what he said.   He questions Jocasta about the party Laius was traveling with and he starts to think that he might have killed Laius, so he...