Essay on Oedipus the King by Sophocles

In the beginning of the play Oedipus meets Laios on a road. Both were driving chariots and neither would yield the right of way. Laios attempts to kill Oedipus’ horses but Oedipus reacts fast killing Laios attendants and his own father, Laios. Oedipus went to Thebes to help and destroy a monster and bless their town. Because of his heroic act, Thebes recalls him again to help and find the murderer who killed their king Laios and punish the man. Oedipus goes and does everything he can to get evidence and find the man who killed Laios the king: “Is this your prayer? It may be answered. Come, Listen to me, act as the crisis demands… Until now I was a stranger to this tale, As I had been a stranger to the crime. Could I track the murderer without a clue?” (Sophocles 1. 1. 204 - 209). Teiresias, a chorus of Theban, elders tells Oedipus he is the murder who killed his father and also mentions he married his own mother along with having children. Oedipus finds all of that to believe and what Oedipus does is find more people to tell him the truth. Jocaste, wife and mother of Oedipus, tells him through the play to not believe such a thing. In Act three Scene five, Shepherd the man, who took Oedipus to Corinth city’s reveals to him that everything is true. Oedipus makes the decision to gouge his eyes out making himself blind to not see the whole catastrophe. He begs Creon to send him away from Theban

He goes out on his search to find the murderer of King Laios, and he does. Unfortunately, it was himself, but he was still able to reveal who did this horrible crime. "Oedipus promises to save the city and drive out the plague" (Sophocles 10). He is successful because he was able to find the murderer of his father, but it turned out to be him. Oedipus is able to save his city by banishing him from feeds. I did this punished himself because he accidentally murders his own father; King Laios which he did not know was his father at the time. Oedipus is able to save his city by banishing himself from Thebes. Oedipus then punishes himself because he accidentally murders his father and then marries his mother. The innocent people of Thebes are now free from the plague, which is what the goal of the search for justice was. The search is successful because when he goes on the surge, he has a goal. The goal is to find the murderer and lift the curse, and he does just that. Oedipus is successful in a search for

“Then I will tell you what I heard at Delphi. In plain words, the god commands us to expel from the Land the Thebes An old defilement we are sheltering. It is a deadly thing, beyond cure;” (Sophocles.98) “By exile or death, blood for blood” (Sophocles,104). Oedipus become’s eager to find the king’s murderer to punish him so that plague is removed but little does he know he is the laios murderer. “then once’s more I must bring what is dark to light (Sophocles 134”). Oedipus is very confident about finding the truth but that truth can be heavy for him. He passed judgment on the murderer without knowing the facts. “ As for the criminal, I pray to God— Whether, it be a lurking thief or one of the number — I pray that man’s life is consumed in evil and wretchedness. (Line 28, scene

Oedipus assumes that Creon desires to have him killed so that he could be King of Thebes. Oedipus also does not want to believe what Teiresias said because that would indicate that the prophecy has came true; he will be the one killed or thrown into exile. He does not believe the truth until he hears from a messenger and a herdsman. When Oedipus asks where the child came from the herdsman replies, "It was a child, them, of the house of Laius" (Sophocles 141). He is finally no longer suspicious of Creon. Without suspicion these characters would have failed terrible in their pursuit to live.

The play opens in the middle of Thebes. Oedipus exits his castle, to be met by almost the entire kingdom. Oedipus knows immediately that something is wrong and it is this singular event that paves the way for the subsequent events that lead him to his downfall. Everyone-young and old, sick and healthy- had gathered in the middle of town seeking deliverance from an unknown evil. This evil is quickly determined to be a plague that had ravaged the land. The people of Thebes are highly religious as stated in “So, with the help of God,/ We shall be saved -Or else indeed we are lost “(148-149) The plague itself was interpreted as a punishment inflicted by the gods, to get the people of Thebes to drive out the

Throughout the tragedy, Oedipus clearly exhibits a pursuit of knowledge to discover the truth behind the murderer of Laius. For instance, Oedipus invokes a curse, “Upon the

plague of Thebes, a historical epidemic in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex." Emerging Infectious Diseases, 18(1): pp. 153-157. Web. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310127/. [Accessed on 24 September 2012].

In Oedipus the King, the oracle warns Laios that his son would kill him and marry his mother (703). When Laios’s wife gave birth to their son, he sends him away to die. Surprisingly, “he gave the baby to a shepherd to be exposed on Mount Kithareon…Laios increased the odds against the child’s survival by piercing and binding his feet, so there was no chance he could crawl away” (703). Laios thinks that because of his actions his son is free from his fate. He decided to let someone deal with the removal of his son instead of killing him himself. Laios didn’t want

Because of his commitment to his people and their suffering, he sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to Delphi to see the gods to find out why his city is under such a great plague and what he can do to stop it. Creon returns and says, “… It was murder that brought the plague-wind on the city” and that it was King Laios that was murdered years ago (Prologue, 104-105). Vowing to bring the murderer to justice and being a just King, Oedipus decrees that if the murderer reveals himself he will not be killed, he will be exiled. This determination and tenaciousness was the beginning of the end of King Oedipus.

The king of Thebes will decide to see this matter through on his own terms, no matter the cost. For Oedipus finding the truth becomes something of an obsession, and it is far more important than what that truth might actually reveal. It seems as if the more facts that are uncovered about the murder of Laios, the more determined Oedipus becomes, perhaps still unconvinced about his own possible implication in the death of Laios (even though he remembers killing a man at a crossroads). He relentlessly marches on, ignoring the pleas from his wife, Jocasta, to abandon the

A tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, is a man who is great but also terribly flawed, who experiences misfortunes while still remaining admirable to the audience at the end of the play. One of Aristotle’s favorite works, Oedipus the King, a play by Sophocles, is a play that above all others, defines the meaning of what a true tragic hero really is. In the play, Oedipus the King, the story unfolds after Oedipus unintentionally kills his own father and goes on to marry his mother. The events of the play are tragic, but it is the way that Oedipus handles the tragedies that make him a tragic hero.

Sophocles's Oedipus Rex is probably the most famous tragedy ever written. Sophocles's tragedy represents a monumental theatrical and interpretative challenge. Oedipus Rex is the story of a King of Thebes upon whom a hereditary curse is placed and who therefore has to suffer the tragic consequences of fate (tragic flaws or hamartia). In the play, Oedipus is the tragic hero. Even though fate victimizes Oedipus, he is a tragic figure since his own heroic qualities, his loyalty to Thebes, and his fidelity to the truth ruin him.

One moment, Oedipus is brimming with hope; the next, he’s sure that he is the killer of his father, King Laius. Every time Oedipus thinks that it can’t possibly be him, evidence proves otherwise. His wife, Jocasta, attempts to prove his innocence but “lets out part of the dire secret by her allusion to the ‘triple crossroads’” (Haigh). By attempting to assist Oedipus, she

During his flight, he Oedipus kills a caravan of presumed low-class travelers. Oedipus comes into Thebes a stranger and hero who solved the riddle of the sphinx. Believing that he is blessed with great luck, Oedipus marries the recently widowed Iokaste and becomes King of Thebes. After many years, a plague vexes the city and Kreon, brother of Iokaste, comes to Oedipus with news from the oracle. He states that the plague will be lifted when the murder of Laios is avenged. Oedipus claims that he sees and understands the terrible fate of Thebes and vows to find the murderer. Since the criminal is said to still be in Thebes, Oedipus believes that a man of his intelligence should have no difficulty in finding the perpetrator. When Oedipus is confronted by Teiresias with truth, perhaps it is Oedipus’ own hubris, which blinds him to the unthinkable truth.

In the Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King, Oedipus struggles to accept the truth and he lets his temper over power him. Throughout the tragedy, he displays all the necessary elements to be categorized as a tragic hero as defined by Aristotle. His refusal to accept the truth led to Oedipus’ downfall. A tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, “is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction.” Based off this definition, Sophocles’ Oedipus clearly exemplifies Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero.