The play by Sophocles called Oedipus the King, or Oedipus Rex has an involved plot that twists and turns. It can be viewed as a prequil to “Antigone” and “Oedipus at Colonus”. In the story Oedipus suffers from the guilt he feels because he killed his father and married his mother. In doing this, he fulfilled a prophecy given to his mother when he was born. Because of this prophecy, his mother wanted him dead. She tied him up by his ankles and gave him to a shepherd to kill. The shepherd pities the baby and instead of killing him, gave him to another shepherd to raise in a foreign city. The infant, Oedipus ends up adopted by the King and Queen of Corinth and believes them to be his parents. When he becomes an adult, he gets a similar prophecy and travels far from Corinth so that he cannot fulfill it. He ends up answering the Sphinxes’ riddle, freeing Thebes from a curse. Because the King had recently died, the grateful citizens make Oedipus the King, and he ends up marrying the Queen who was the former Kings wife. He has four children with her, two boys and two girls. When another curse hits the city he investigates and finds out he is the natural son of the King and Queen of Thebes, not of Corinth as he believed. By the end of the play Oedipus’ adopted father has died of natural causes, his mother has killed herself, and he has blinded himself. He asks his brother in law, Creon, to look after his daughters and leaves the city..
Another great playwright, William Shakespeare said “To thine own self be true” In order to do that you need to know who you are. This is Oedipus’ guilt, he did not know who he was and because of this, he fulfilled the prophecies. Not knowing yourself is bad, but some of the other characters are more actively guilty than Oedipus. However, knowing about the prophecy some of his actions are not good choices. He kills an unknown, but obviously wealthy stranger and he marries a woman old enough to be his mother. For someone trying to avoid a prophecy that he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother these are not good things to do.
Oedipus’ mother/wife ordered her own son killed so that he could not kill her husband and marry her, and then she marries a man young enough to be her son in order to go on being the Queen of Thebes. By doing this, she sets the whole tragedy in motion. As the action in the play moves on she avoids, or refuses to see things that should lead her to believe that Oedipus may be her son. She knows how she tied his ankles together and Oedipus has injuries to his ankles that could have been caused by the way she tied up her baby when she sent him off to be murdered. She knew about the earlier prophecy and did not share the details about what she did to her infant son with Oedipus when they got married. It was only when things unraveled that she started coming up with the details. Then instead of facing him and taking responsibility as a good mother should she kills herself and leaves him to try to sort everything out and cope with it all by himself.
The shepherds lied to her about the baby being dead so they have some blame, but it is easy to forgive them because they did it to save a helpless baby. However, the most truly evil person in the play is the Queen’s brother Ceron. He seems to be innocent at first but what he really wants is to have the throne for himself. He know about the prophecy, but does not tell anyone. These are two of the ways he moves the action along to its final tragic conclusion. In the end he finally shows his true real motives when he says, “Crave not mastery in all, For the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy fall.:” ,
Works Cited
McManus, Barbara F. "Unity of Action in Oedipus the King." 11 1999. The College of New Rochelle. 2012 16 06 <http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/oedipusplot.html>.
Sophocles. "The Oedipus Trilogy." 2012. The Gutenberg Project. 16 06 2012 <2012>.
Sparknotes. "The Oedipus Plays." 2012. Spark Notes. 16 06 2012 <http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/oedipus/context.html>
