Sophocles' Play: Oedipus Rex

Sophocles' Play: Oedipus Rex

  • Submitted By: drienne
  • Date Submitted: 03/18/2010 1:51 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 309
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 2

Oedipus Rex is probably the most famous tragedy ever written. The play Oedipus was written by Sophocles. The irony I like in the play Oedipus is when Oedipus intend to insult Teiresias’s blindness in the play. An irony is the general name given to literary techniques that involve surprising, interesting, or amusing contradiction. The dramatic irony takes place, because he is the one who lacks vision, and he himself will soon be blind. A dramatic irony is when there is an contradiction between what a character thinks and what the reader or audience know to be true.

Astonishingly, Teiresias tells Oedipus that himself is the killer, and that his marriage is a sinful union. Oedipus takes what teiresias says as an insult and jumps to conclusions. Now Oedipus is not only a man who is his father’s killer and his mothers husband, but now who could once see, and now is blind.

Furthermore, this scene takes place in Thebes. Creon was the one who suggested that Oedipus go see the blind prophet. This situation worsens because Jocasta hangs herself because Creon and Oedipus constant bickering about him going to the blind prophet couldn’t be settled. Rex then takes two pins from his mothers dress and gouges his eyes out.

To further emphasize, Oedipus never knew whom his real parents were. That is why Rex never went back to Corinth where he was raised by his foster parents. Oedipus soon found out that he was left to die by his real parents because Rex was prophesized that he would decease his father.

In conclusion, Oedipus had cursed himself all along. He never knew until toward the end of the play. As the sphinx riddle asked “ what goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?” “A Man!”

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