This tragedy is based on Greek mythology that a child will unwittingly kill his father and will marry his own mother
Nasarullah Leghari
Sophocles was a playwright and not a philosopher as many may think. However, Sophocles’ work, especially Oedipus Rex (429 BC), influenced later philosophers, particularly Aristotle (384 BCE-322BCE). Aristotle was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy.
Sophocles (496-406) BCE, Colonus, near Athens, who has written 124 plays and has won 20 competitions. Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the king) was performed by Sophocles, on the stage between 430 and 426 BC that marks the summit of classical Greek drama’s formal achievement, known for its tight construction and perfect use of the dramatic devices of recognition and discovery. Oedipus Rex is a typical classical tragedy because it has the element of tragic setting, atmosphere and mood, tragic character with tragic hamartia, tragic plot design moving to tragic disintegration, and therefore the tragic realization by the character and audience. Sophocles masterfully uses dramatic irony in Oedipus Rex. The play is written in free verse with the meter of the play alternating between lyric and iambic trimesters. Fate versus free will is the central theme of the play. The story revolves around Oedipus’ attempt to use his own free will to escape the prophecy given to him by the oracle of Delphi. The oracle prophesied that Oedipus’ fate was to kill his father and marry his mother.
As the play opens, the citizens of Thebes beg their king, Oedipus, to lift the plague that threatens to destroy the city. Oedipus has already sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to the oracle to learn what will uplift the plague from the city. As the Creon returns and tells that the murderer of late King Louis is within this city you need to bring him to justice. The complicated part is how to do this. The crime has gone unsolved for many years.
In a long speech, the chorus mourns the dead, and begs the gods for help. The leader of chorus suggests that the blind prophet Teiresias might be able to help. This is an early foreshadowing of the interplay between sight and blindness that builds throughout the play. “It is one of the play’s central ironies that the blind old man is the first to see the truth”. As the Teiresias arrives, Oedipus welcomes him, with praise for his powers and his knowledge. But the seer is strangely reticent. He wishes only to go back home, without speaking. At first cajolingly and then angrily, Oedipus insists on hearing what Teiresias has to say. Teiresias says that Oedipus himself is the cause of the plagues, and the murder of the king Louis. In a rage, Oedipus rejects Teiresias and his vision, and accuses the seer of conspiring with Creon against the throne. Teiresias leaves the palace while saying that Oedipus will be discovered to be a brother as well as a father to his children and husband and son to the same woman and the killer of his own father.
Oedipus solicitous goes to queen Jocasta (his wife). Trying to calm her husband, Jocasta says that she and Laius long ago outwitted the gods and their prophets, and that he need not fear them either. Jocasta tells Oedipus how she and Laius, cheated fate. It was prophesied that their son would kill his father and marry his mother, and we undid that foretelling by abandoning their infant boy to starve on a mountainside and my husband was killed by a group of robbers on a crossroads, where three roads meet. Jocasta continuing her speech, everything turned out fine, and there’s nothing to worry about now.
Instead of calming Oedipus, his wife’s narrative makes him more upset. Pieces of memory begin forming themselves into frightening Shapes in his mind. As he quizzes Jocasta on the details of the former King’s murder, Oedipus begins to suspect that he murdered Laius on crossroads. Jocasta tells Oedipus not to jump to conclusions, and they agreed to send for the old, freed slave who is the sole surviving witness of the murder. At the time another messenger from Corinth enters the palace bringing the news of the death of the king of Corinth, ploy bus. And that the people want Oedipus to be their king. Hearing this, Oedipus believes that he is now free of at least part of the prophecy, if his father, Polybius has died of old age and illness. Oedipus worried about the part of the prophecy that says he will wed his mother, Oedipus says he must stay away from Corinth as long as his mother is alive and well there. Attempting to comfort Oedipus, the messenger from Corinth speaks and winds up revealing shattering details of the truth that king Polybius raised Oedipus as his own son, and queen Merope loved the child as a natural mother, but they were only foster parents. Oedipus is free to go back to Corinth anytime he likes without fear of illicit relations with his mother, because Merope is no blood relation of his.
Instead of bringing relief to Oedipus, this news increases his distress. He presses the messenger for details, and the messenger says that the child raised by Polybus and Merope was a founding, rescued from a hillside where he was abandoned to starvation, his ankles bound together. A shepherd found the child and delivered it to the messenger, who turned it over to the childless royal couple at the palace of Corinth.
Oedipus asks for a description of the shepherd, and the messenger says that the man was servant of Laius. Oedipus, Determined to know the whole story called the shepherd, the shepherd appears, preferring to let the secret remain buried, the shepherd tries to avoid answering the questions oedipus asks him. The shepherd so desperately not to tell, but the secret is revealed very quickly. The baby that jocasta and Laius abandoned was the same baby who was raised at Corinth by Polybus and Merope, and who came home to Thebes to kill Laius and wed the dead King’s bride, Jocasta.
Oedipus quickly realizes the horror of what he has been told, and he rushes offstage to nurse his sorrow. Piling tragedy, a top tragedy, a messenger from the palace comes onstage to announce that Jocasta has taken her own life. And the king pulled pins from her clothes and blinded himself, as he blinds himself, he says, at least now he will not have to see his father’s eyes when they meet in death, he also cannot bear to look at his children, his kinsmen or the people of Thebes.
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Nasarullah Leghari is student of BS English Literature at University of Sindh Jamshoro. Email: nasrullahleghari73@gmail.com
