Oedipus the King by Sophocles

*contains spoilers*

Though I was more familiar with basics of the story of Oedipus the King than Sophocles’s Antigone or Electra, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the impact of the revelations was in no way softened by this fact. Pleasantly surprised? Really? Considering the tragically uncomfortable and uncomfortably tragic events that unfold in Oedipus the King, yes, I would even then proclaim that I was *pleasantly surprised* – the way in which Sophocles unravels the prophesied events means that they still manage to sucker-punch the guts and provoke the empathy and pathos that I am sure they were originally intended to.

As was Creos in Antigone, Oedipus appears much the same: the leader of men in the city of Thebes, and a man inebriated on hubris and paranoia. As I have stated in the previous blog, Sophocles supposedly penned Oedipus the King some ten years after Antigone – though the events in Oedipus the King do actually precede those in Antigone – and with Antigone being both the daughter and the sister of Oedipus, this does actually provide the audience with a hint of the sort of tragedy that is forthcoming in this particular text. The play begins with Oedipus up in arms about a plague that has for some years dogged the inhabitants of Thebes, and it is revealed, as Teiresias is called forth, that the source of the plague is in fact Oedipus himself; “You are the man whose crimes pollute our city.” Teiresias even hints at the disconcerting depths of the crimes which Oedipus has unknowingly committed, though Oedipus, unable to distinguish any hint of wrongdoing from his past, suspects Creon of plotting to usurp his thrown with the aid of the blind seer Teiresias (accounting this for Teiresias’s actually correct suggestion that Oedipus killed his royal and marital predecessor, Laius).

Teiresias, pushed to the point of offense, leaves angrily, and Oedipus is left to pursue the matter for himself as he interrogates his eventual successor as King of Thebes, Creon. It is here that we witness the full extent of Oedipus’s raging paranoia, and, upon Creon’s exit and Iocasta’s entrance, Oedipus prophetically and childishly reports to his wife, “He says that I am Laius’ murderer…he used a tool – a crafty prophet.” Iocasta goes on to reassure Oedipus that this cannot be the case, as Laius was killed “by strangers, / By brigands, at a place where three ways meet”, even though it was prophesied that his son would kill him. This leads Oedipus to doubt the words of Teiresias and all prophets, and to suspect the supposition that the god’s plans come to anything at all – hence the hubris, and, once more, Sophocles’s open questioning of will versus fate. Iocasta does however state that a boy had been born to them and that, out of fear of a fulfilled prophesy, Laius had bound his feet and thrown him into the wild to die – the question of how Oedipus, whose name means “swollen feet”, does not manage to put two and two together does here arise, but one guesses that this would be a wild coincidence in the unassuming eye of the naïve Oedipus.

Oedipus then reveals to his beloved wife, Iocasta, that the prophets proclaimed that he would murder his own father and marry and bear children with his own mother, and this prophesy saw him desperately escape the city of Corinth to avoid this terrible fate and never return. Oedipus, now suspecting that he had indeed killed King Laius on his journey out of Corinth, though not knowing Laius for who he was, is thus compelled to seek out the truth. On gathering information from a travelling Corinthian, Oedipus thus learns that he is not in fact the true son of those who raised him in Corinth; “…there’s none of Polybus in you.” This Corinthian claims that Oedipus was given to him by another, a Theban shepherd, and so Oedipus, upon finding this other shepherd, learns that Laius and Iocasta are his true parents, and, just as was prophesied by Phoebus Apollo, Oedipus did indeed kill his father and marry and bear children with his mother, Iocasta. Having already realised this, Iocasta flees to her chambers and takes her own life. On finding Iocasta, Oedipus, driven by shame, stabs himself in the eyes wishing never to see, hear or speak ever again. He bears emotional farewells to his beloved daughters, and begs Creon to look out for them (the dramatic irony being that Creon goes on to kill Antigone) as he wanders out of Thebes with his staff in hand and into his just deserts.

As it is with Antigone, the audience is left to ponder the nature of free will and fate; each character’s attempt to take control of their own fate sees them inadvertently stumble upon the paths down which the gods claimed they would go.