Essay On Oedipus The King

Oedipus Character Analysis Sophocles is known for several plays, one of the most well-known being Oedipus Rex. Oedipus, the King of Thebes, is tasked with finding a way to end the plague that is taking over the city. Being the great leader he is, Oedipus learns that the way to stop the plague is to find whoever killed Laius, the king before Oedipus, and promises to banish the killer upon finding him. Oedipus sends for Teiresias, the blind prophet, and demands him for some answers as to what has happened. Upon hearing Teiresias’s answer that it is Oedipus who murdered Laius, readers notice shifts in Oedipus’s character through the rest of the play in nearly every way except for his determination, which ultimately leads to his fall. There was a time before Oedipus became King, when Thebes was under the control of the Sphinx. This creature determined whether the people would live or die. Oedipus challenged the Sphinx, solved the riddle, which then freed the city. Having done this, Oedipus became King of Thebes. “This you did in virtue of no knowledge we could give you, in virtue of no teaching; it was God that aided you, men say, and you are held with God’s assistance to have saved our lives.” (41-45) This
Readers know of this from the very beginning of the play: “I did not think it fit that I should hear of this from messengers but came myself, — I Oedipus whom all men call the Great.” (5-7) These early lines are powerful, but do not resemble the same Oedipus at the end of the play, literally blind and weeping, “O children, where are you? Come here, come to my hands, a brother’s hands which turned your father’s eyes, those bright eyes you knew once, to what you see, a father seeing nothing, knowing nothing, begetting you from his own source of life.” The discovery of what he really did the day he killed the stranger at the crossroads broke Oedipus down to an almost unrecognizable