The Greek Tragedy of Oedipus the King

The Greek drama “Oedipus The King” evidently leads to the unveiling of a tragedy. Oedipus, the protagonist of the play uncovers his tragic birth story and the curse he had been baring his whole life. Oedipus is notorious for his personal insight that helped him defeat Sphinx, which lead him to becoming the king of Thebes. He is admired by the people of Thebes and is considered to be a mature, inelegant and a rational leader. From his birth, his story began with a prophecy that Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. Through out the play numerous people, who tell him of his unknown past, visit Oedipus. Blind to the truth he casts them away until a blind man named Therisis gives a sight of truth to Oedipus. As Oedipus learns the truth he realizes the great evil his life carries. After finding his wife and also mother hung in her bedroom, Oedipus blinds himself with the gold pins that held Jocasta’s robe. Oedipus blind to the truth is finally able to see when the old blind man visits him and tells him the truth about his life. Both metaphorically and physically sight plays a significant role in understanding the irony of a blind man seeing the truth while Oedipus who isn’t blind doesn’t seem to the truth that’s right in front of him.

The pursuit of justice is an endeavor that many find to be challenging and a quest itself, as one will come across various trials and complications that may stop them in their pursuit or may mislead them. As humans, we find moral correctness and righteousness a very appealing state to be in, as justice will act as a platform to satisfy the desire for this correctness. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, we meet our miserable anti-hero, Oedipus, in his pursuit for truth and righting the wrong of the plague that is affecting his people of Thebes. As he makes efforts to solve this problem, he comes to find out that he is the source of the issue, thus exposing the tragic flaw of Oedipus and effectively making this play a very effective Greek tragedy. This pursuit of righteousness ends up being the downfall of Oedipus. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus pursues justice through his realization of his past, his interactions with various characters in the play, and comes to understand more of justice in his situation through his reactions to adversity in this play, in order to portray a questionably successful pursuit of justice.

When Creon delivers the message that the only way to stop the plague is by banishment or repaying blood with blood for the murder of Laius, Oedipus proclaimed, “I shall be the defender of Thebes, and Apollo’s champion, too. I shall rid us of this pollution, not for the sake of a distant relative, but for my own sake.” This personalistic trait shows Oedipus as being holy as the Greek gods themselves and acting like he is the defender of Apollo when he really isn’t. This egotistic trait is established in the line where he says he is Apollo’s champion and later on he learns he is not. His hamartia is that his egotism led him to finding who the murderer is and that was himself. As the play goes on moments later Oedipus is confident about finding the murderer of Laius. He is confident that he is above the gods and arrogant to say, “You pray to the gods? Let me grant your prayers.” This quote shows how Oedipus thinks he can course his way through solving problems by being over confident of himself. His blindness of the truth and his hubris created the arrogant personality until the end of the play where anagnorisis happens followed by peripeteia. The arrogance Oedipus is conveying creates a personality that will ultimately lead to his tragic

“Now my curse on the murderer. Whoever he is, a lone man unknown in his crime - or one among many, let that man drag out his life in agony, step by painful step - I curse myself as well … if by any chance He proves to be an intimate of our house, Here at my hearth, with my full knowledge, May the curse I just called down on him strike me!”(p. 1137). Oedipus’s intense pride or hubris, and his steadfast determination to uncover the mystery of Laius’s murder ironically leads him to unwittingly curse himself.

Charles could see Erik giving up as sharply as he felt it, the small spark that he’d come to label in his own mind as ‘life force’ dwindling to an ember and extinguishing. He was stepping forward before he could stop himself, blooding rushing in his ears against time as he spoke. “Dēsístite!“

Oedipus was also a very selfish man. There are many places in the book that show Oedipus really only cares about himself. King Lauis’ murder was just one. He did all of the investigating to find out who his parents were for himself. Not for Jocasta who could possibly be his mother. He only cared if something bad was happening to him. He made everyone who might have known anything about him drop everything they were doing and come to him to tell him their story. He thought he didn’t need the gods so he insulted them by talking about how they didn’t help with the riddle and he did it all by himself. He was extremely self centered. Oedipus also cared more about himself than he did his wife or children. He didn’t think about anyone but himself when he found out he was married to his mother. He stabbed his own eyes out not even thinking about his children or how they would survive. He just knew that he couldn’t handle what he had seen so he was going to take the coward’s way out. Oedipus also cared too much about himself to kill himself. Instead he wanted to be paraded around Thebes blind so the citizens would pity him and talk about him. He gave his children to Creon without a second thought and didn’t even think about how that might be a burden on him.

This story is a perfect model for a great tragedy because it emphasizes on human weakness and man’s inability to change his destiny. “Oedipus the King” was introduced by Sophocles in which he introduced the achievements of Oedipus. It takes you on the journey or Oedipus and this tragic things that he goes through. Although Oedipus was a good person and a true hero, he was the unfortunate one to discover that the gods were only playing with him. Oedipus has everything a man of that time could ever want: he has a great wife and children, he becomes the king of Thebes, and has great fame throughout the lands. “The world knows my name; I am Oedipus.”

Sophocles’ Oedipus is one of the most well-known tragic heroes in the history of drama. His strange

When the priest says, “You came to Thebes, you freed us from the tax we paid with our lives to that rasping Singer...we need now the great power men everywhere know you possess. Find some way to protect us”(41-50), it exhibits how great of a leader and hero he was to the city. The deeper he searched for the man to end this plague, however, the more horrid it got. The more information he received, he began to connect the pieces from his past. Not only did he figure out the man he killed on the path was king Laios, but it was his biological father. His fear of the prophecy that the oracle told him was becoming true. play gets even more tragic as he realizes that the queen he had four children with was his mother, who kill herself before he finds the truth. Oedipus gauged his eyes outs after seeing her dead body. Oedipus was blinded from the truth his entire life. When he finally learned the truth about himself, it blinds him.

As in many other stories, the twelve different steps of the hero’s journey, which were established by Joseph Campbell, can be found. The play of Oedipus Rex, the cursed king, written by the English teacher Zachary Hamby is an example of how the hero’s journey’s twelve steps are applied in literature. The first step is called ‘Ordinary World’, which simply means that the hero of the story is still in their daily life, in their normal world. In Oedipus Rex, it means that the protagonist Oedipus is in the kingdom of Corinth where he lives as a prince.

The audience are fearful when more information comes out about Oedipus and his past as you can not believe that a strong, honest, good man would commit a murder in the first place but to hide that information for years. The audience can feel pity when he finds his wife/mother hanging and gouges his eyes out with her brooches so he can not longer see and enjoy life due to his sins as Oedipus always seemed to be attempting to do the right thing by breaking the plague. Oedipus misstep that changes the direction of the play is speaking to his wife Iokaste and stating that Kreon had murdered Laios and then hearing his wife tell about the death of her husband and the he was killed where "three highways meet" and this jolted a memory in Oedipus of him killing a man at that type of intersection. He then called for the household servant/Shepherd that had witnessed the murder to come to Thebes to speak to him and that is where he learned about his ankles being pierced and how he had given him to the Messanger as an infant and he learned that Polybos was not his father and that he indeed had killed his own father and married his

In the opening lines of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus introduces himself saying “Here I am myself—you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus” (7-9). With this declaration, Oedipus asserts his importance and universally renowned identity as the man who solved the riddle that freed the city of Thebes from the Sphinx. A large part of Oedipus’s character, therefore, is to determine the answers to questions unknown; his ambition stems from his desire to realize the truth. Oedipus recognizes that he must do something to save his people from the plague that is slowing destroying them because he “would be blind to misery not to pity [his] people kneeling at [his] feet” (14-15). Oedipus sends Creon to seek out the oracle for guidance, and Creon returns with a message and suggests that he tell Oedipus the news in private behind closed doors. Oedipus, however, wants to show his openness to the truth and tells Creon, “Speak out, speak to all us. I grieve for these, my people, far more than I fear for my own life” (104-106). When Oedipus learns that he must find the murderer of Laius in order to rid Thebes of the plague, he declares that he will “stop at nothing” to “lay [his] hands on the man who shed [Laius’s] blood …” (302-203). Oedipus declares that he will fight for Laius as if the man was his father, a statement that contains a

As the king of Thebes, Oedipus is very intent on discovering the truth of who murdered Laius, as he should be. The world these characters live in, however, is very reliant on prophecies. Knowing this, the physical danger of what may happen to the person Oedipus is wishing this fate upon and what that person may do doesn’t stop Oedipus from fiercely pursuing the truth. The audience knows that ironically, the person whom Oedipus has wished this fate upon is himself. As Oedipus digs deeper and deeper into the truth as the play progresses, the truth becomes more and more evident.

(Sophocles 6) Oedipus is being called upon to end the plague in the Thebes. 3. The chorus in Oedipus Rex makes the assumption that the people of Thebes are suffering great turmoil. Because of the unresolved conflict, the assumption can be made that the people are desperate for and at the mercy of the Gods.

However, in spite of all of his positive qualities, he is a man that is prone to arrogance and impulsive behaviors. At the opening of the play, when he addresses the city about the plague, he tells them not to worry for “Here I am myself...the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus” (7-8), implying that he can solve any problem simply because of who he is. Oedipus also shows his arrogance by comparing himself to the gods. After hearing the chorus’ cries to the gods for help he tells the city of Thebes to “Let [him] grant [their] prayers...listen to [him]”(245-246). Oedipus displays his quick temper after the prophet Tireseas declines to tell him who Laius's murderer is; he hastily becomes infuriated at the prophet, telling him he is "scum of the earth . . . [a man who] would enrage a heart of stone" (381).