OEDIPUS REX
PLOT SUMMARY
The play opens with a priest telling King Oedipus about the plague that destroys Thebes. The priest asks for Oedipus’ help in finding out why the gods have sent this plague, and the king replies that he has already sent his brother-in-law Creon to the oracle at Delphi to discover the reason. Creon returns with the oracle’s answer: that the gods will not be appeased until the murderer of Thebes’ previous king, Laios, is caught and justice served.
The audience would have known the story of Oedipus; they would have been fully aware that it was Oedipus who, unwittingly, had killed Laios years before, and so the audience see the irony when Oedipus now eagerly assures his people that the killer will be brought to justice. Unaware, of course, that he is the murderer of Laios, Oedipus makes a lengthy speech to his people, concluding with these formidable words:
“I pray god that the unseen killer,
Whoever he is, and whether he killed
Alone or had help, be cursed with a life
As evil as he is, a life
Of human deprivation.”
[Oedipus Rex, Robert Bagg, 296]
Throughout the Oedipus cycle, we are reminded of Oedipus’ fate with the heavy use of dramatic irony. Perhaps the most obvious use of this literary device is when Oedipus reassures his people that he “will defend [Laios’] cause / As if it were my father’s.” In the very first scene, when the seer Teiresias is asked to name Laios’ killer, it is clearly demonstrated that Teiresias knows the dreadful truth, and is ominously reminding the audience of it:
“The most terrible knowledge is the kind
It pays no wise man to possess.
I knew this, but forgot it.
I should never have come here.”
[Oedipus Rex, Robert Bagg, 383]
Eventually, Teiresias admits the truth (“You are yourself the murderer you seek”) but the king refuses to believe him, and sends him away angrily. He then accuses Creon of conspiring with Teiresias and threatens him with either a penalty of death or exile, but neither punishment is delivered in the end.
After Teiresias and Creon leave, Oedipus muses on his accusations and begins to wonder if he really did kill his father. His wife-mother Jocasta, in trying to reassure him, claims that not all prophecies come true; for example, she was told that her son would kill his father and marry his mother, but that never happened (insofar as she’s aware). Still questioning his own innocence, Oedipus asks for the details of Laios’ murder. When Jocasta mentions the crossroads at which her husband was killed, Oedipus is convinced that the man he killed many years ago was his father. He stammers out these famous words:
“Just now, something you said made my heart race.
Something… I remember… wakes up terrified.”
[Oedipus Rex, Robert Bagg, 844]
To try and disprove his fears, Oedipus calls for a shepherd, the only person who witnessed the murder and lived to tell the tale. Coincidentally, the shepherd is the very servant who Jocasta gave her baby son Oedipus to many years ago, and who, unable to bring himself to kill the prince, gave him to another servant to deal with. Oedipus demands to see this other servant, who reluctantly gives the king more details. Jocasta, suddenly realising that her husband must be her son, begs Oedipus to abandon his search for the truth; of course, Oedipus refuses (“You cannot move me. I will know the truth.”). Jocasta runs into the palace to kill herself, leaving Oedipus with these powerful words:
“O man of doom! For by no other name
Can I address you now or evermore.”
[Oedipus Rex, H. D. F. Kitto, 1071]
At last, the servant admits the true identity of the baby, and Oedipus rushes into the palace after his wife, again leaving with a short and dramatic speech:
“All! All! It has all happened!
It was all true. O light! Let this
Be the last time I look on you.
You see now who I am─
The child who must not be born!
I loved where I must not love!
I killed where I must not kill!”
[Oedipus Rex, Robert Bagg, 1336]
A messenger enters the stage and gives details of Jocasta’s suicide and how Oedipus has blinded himself with his wife’s hairpins. Oedipus eventually emerges, and says he blinded himself as he was too ashamed to ever look upon his two daughters again, whose lives he has inadvertently ruined. He begs Creon─who was quick to adopt the role of king in Oedipus’ short absence─to take him to the mountains where he was abandoned as a baby, to live his life in shame and solitude. Reluctantly, Creon agrees, and the play concludes with Oedipus being led out of the palace.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Here, at the very end of the play, the dramatic turn in Oedipus’ character becomes obvious. In the beginning of Oedipus Rex, he was displayed as a good and just king who cared deeply for the welfare of his people, but who had one flaw that showed through his kindness every now and again: his pride, perhaps even his arrogance. He resigns himself to his destiny with these words:
“This I know: sickness can never kill me,
Nor any other evil; I was not saved
That day from death, except for some strange doom.
My fate must take the course it will.”
[Oedipus Rex, H. D. F. Kitto, 1454]
This brief mention of “sickness can never kill me” can be traced back to the very beginning of the play, in which he claims that “you [the Thebans] suffer; yet, though sick, not one of you / Suffers a sickness half as great as mine.” Of this sickness Oedipus will not die, but rather wallow in, as a constant reminder of the crimes he committed and the shame he must eternally live in. The king recognises this when he claims that “sickness can never kill me”: a true sign that he has accepted the fact that justice must be served, and that he must live in shame and repentance for the rest of his life.
THEMES
FREE WILL & FATE
As is the case with a great many works of ancient literature, a key theme in Oedipus Rex is fate and free will, and the balance─or conflict─between the two. The play focuses on Oedipus who, in desperately trying to escape his fate, ensures that it is brought about. His tragic flaw can be found in his intellectual curiosity, his unrelenting pursuit of the truth. Had he continued to live in ignorance of the patricide and incest of which he was guilty, he would have lived on in happiness. Instead, his own intelligence and determination brought about his downfall.
These possibilities raise some uncomfortable questions: is there any point in being relentless in our search for the truth, if it only brings tragedy to our lives? Is it better that Oedipus had the intelligence and will to pursue the truth, or should he have lived his life in blissful ignorance? Does our character determine our actions, or vice versa? Are we really free to act against our natural impulses, or are we all, in some way, fated to act in a predictable way according to our personal character?
BLINDNESS & SIGHT
Scholars have debated why Oedipus didn’t follow Jocasta’s lead and commit suicide, rather than just blind himself. Perhaps he felt that his crimes were too great for a shorter punishment like death; as the chorus told him, “Far better to be dead than to be blind.” Or perhaps it had little to do with how harshly Oedipus thought he should punish himself; maybe it was simply the significant symbolism that blindness had played throughout Oedipus Rex that compelled Sophocles to have his protagonist blind himself. Due to his aforementioned and perhaps slightly excessive hubris, he has been figuratively blind to the prophecies and accusations that crop up frequently throughout the play. For example, Teiresias once says to Oedipus:
“You have been living unaware […]
Immersed in evil that you cannot see.”
[Oedipus Rex, Robert Bagg, 440]
Oedipus, in defiance of the seer’s claim that he murdered Laios, cries:
“You’re living in the grip of black
Unbroken night! You can’t harm me
Or any man who can see the sunlight.”
[Oedipus Rex, Robert Bagg, 450]
Further examples of this ominous theme of blindness can be found in these quotes, both spoken by the physically blind seer Teiresias:
“Listen─since you have taunted me with blindness!
You have your sight, and yet you cannot see
Where, nor with whom, you live, nor in what horror.
Your parents─do you know them? or that […]
A father’s and a mother’s curse
Shall change the light that now you see to darkness?
And you are blind to other horrors […].
Therefore, heap your scorn
On Creon and on me, for no man living
Will meet a doom more terrible than yours.”
[Oedipus Rex, H. D. F. Kitto, 412]
“That man whom you seek
With threats and proclamations for the death
Of Laios, he is living here; he’s thought
To be a foreigner, but shall be found
Theban by birth─and little joy will this
Bring him; when, with his eyesight turned to blindness,
His wealth to beggary, on foreign soil
With staff in hand he’ll tap his way along…”
[Oedipus Rex, H. D. F. Kitto, 449]
At the end of Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus finally acknowledges the truth, he physically blinds himself. Thus, throughout the entirety of the performance, Oedipus is in some way blind to the dreadful truth that he cannot bear to face.
OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
PLOT SUMMARY
Oedipus, now blind and exiled from Thebes, arrives with his daughter Antigone at Colonus, near Athens. He is told to move on because Colonus is sacred to the Eumenides, or the Furies. However, Oedipus actually finds this encouraging, because Apollo’s prophecy stated that not only would he kill his father and marry his mother, but also that he would die peacefully at a land holy to the Eumenides. After managing to convince the elders of Colonus (who have heard of Oedipus and, understandably, fear him) that he should be allowed to stay in their town, he asks to see the king of Athens, Theseus. Theseus gives him permission to stay in Colonus, won over by Oedipus’ story that he is here on a sacred mission.
Oedipus’ youngest daughter Ismene soon arrives and tells Oedipus that her brother, Eteocles, has seized control of Thebes and that her other brother, Polynices, has rallied up an army in preparation to usurp the throne himself─a story which Aeschylus wrote about in his Seven Against Thebes. Oedipus claims that he will support neither son.
Throughout the play, characters comment that Creon wishes Oedipus to return to Thebes so that he can kill him and neither Eteocles nor Polynices can rule Thebes. He now arrives and asks Oedipus to return, under the pretense that he, Creon, is concerned about a prophecy which said that Oedipus would suffer should he not come home. But the blind king sees through Creon’s apparent reasons and refuses to return to Thebes. At this, Creon grabs Antigone, and reveals that he has already captured Ismene. King Theseus, remembering his promise to always support Oedipus, frees the girls and defeats Creon.
Hearing thunder and assuming that this is his time to die, Oedipus journeys to a small copse of trees where he dies peacefully. Theseus is the only witness to his death.
ANTIGONE
The play begins with Antigone trying to persuade her sister Ismene to help bury her brother, Polynices. After the deaths of Polynices and Eteocles, Creon ruled that only Eteocles would be buried with all the appropriate rituals, while Polynices would be “devoured / By dogs and birds, [and] mangled most hideously”. In defiance of Creon’s words, Antigone resolves to bury Polynices anyway, but cannot convince Ismene to go against the ruling of her uncle.
A guard is quick to discover that an attempt at a burial for Polynices has been made, and rushes to tell Creon. Initially, Creon suspects the guard of doing the dreadful deed, but Antigone is eventually caught and confesses to burying her brother. Creon rules that both Antigone and Ismene─even though the latter had no part in the burial─will be put to death. At this, his son Haemon (who is engaged to Antigone) enters, begs him to reconsider and, realising that his pleas are futile, leaves in anger and despair. The blind seer Teiresias then comes to warn Creon that he is making a grave mistake. He even goes so far as to predict that Creon’s son Haemon will die if Creon chooses this punishment for the two sisters. He then calls him a tyrant and a megalomaniac. Here is where we note the difference between Creon’s initial reason for sentencing Antigone, which is that she simply broke the law, and his more dark and powerful one, his unhealthy craving for submission from his people and absolute power for himself.
CREON: Prophets have always been too fond of gold.
TEIRESIAS: And tyrants, of the shameful use of power.
[Antigone, H. D. F. Kitto, 1055]
At last, the reasoning of Haemon, Teiresias and the Chorus convince Creon that he should renounce his punishment for Antigone and Ismene. However, he is too late; word is brought that Antigone has hanged herself, and Haemon, too, has killed himself in despair. Just when Creon believes his problems couldn’t get any worse (“Where will it end? What else can Fate hold in store?”), he is told that his wife Eurydice has also killed herself. Creon, despairing, begs to be led away, and the play concludes as he rushes into the palace, sobbing in shame.
“Lead me away, a rash, a misguided man,
Whose blindness has killed a wife and a son.
O, where can I look? What strength can I find?
On me has fallen a doom greater than I can bear.”
[Antigone, H. D. F. Kitto, 1339]
THEMES
GENDER
Considering some of the beliefs of the Ancient Greeks, it is surprising that Sophocles chose a young teenage girl as the protagonist of his tale. 5th century Athenians believed that young virgin women of Antigone’s age had a condition called hysteria, which literally means womb-itis; they believed that the womb travelled around the body, attacking whichever organs they thought were responsible for decision-making and sensical thought in general. Not only did Sophocles use a young woman as his main character, but she was a strong, opinionated and stubborn young woman who was not intimidated by the face of authority. The other female characters in the play─such as the timid, placid Ismene and her aunt Eurydice─are the opposite of Antigone, and the typical Ancient Greek woman: they knew their places, spoke little and only when directly spoken to. Antigone is the picture of the unconventional young woman of antiquity, as she is defiant and wilful.
ETHICS & POLITICS
A key theme in Sophocles’ Antigone is the role of the individual against the state. Here, Creon represents the state, and Antigone represents the individual. Morality and duty to the state were ideas that greatly interested the Greeks in Sophocles’ time. The characters throughout the play struggle with the balance between their own intuitive morality and their duty to comply with the state’s laws; Antigone believes at heart that she is right in burying her brother, but she also knows that she should obey Creon. In my opinion, it is not actually Antigone who struggles the most with the balance of these two concepts, but her sister Ismene. She admits that she would greatly like to help her sister with the burial of Polynices, but is too afraid to defy her uncle’s orders. However, when Antigone is sentenced to death, she gives herself up as well, begging to be killed alongside her sister even though she had no part in the crime. When she is pardoned, but Antigone’s sentence still remains, Ismene despairs, believing that it is her fault that her sister died. And so, throughout the play, Ismene’s personal struggle against her natural instincts to bury her brother and the obligation she feels to obey Creon becomes her own downfall, as she bears the weight of her sister’s death.
