Oedipus Rex Analysis Irony Knowledge Catharsis Essay

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Literary Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex


The main theme of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is knowledge. Oedipus begins the play wanting to know why Thebes is suffering a plague. He turns Creon, who has been sent to the oracle to find the meaning of the plague. Creon reports that the Thebans must “drive away the polluting stain this land has harboured” (113-14). The polluting stain refers to the murder of King Laius and the fact that the murderer still lives, unpunished, in Thebes. Oedipus vows to remove the offending pollution. Sophocles uses irony to bring the tragedy into focus. Oedipus declares, “This polluting stain I will remove, not for some distant friend, but for myself. For whoever killed this man may soon enough desire to turn his hand in the same way against me, too, and kill me” (165-69). The irony is that he is the murderer, and by acting as the prosecutor of justice he inadvertently destroys the life he has come to possess as ruler: in the end, his wife will hang herself out of horror for what the facts have uncovered; he will blind himself and stagger out of Thebes a broken man. Yet in the…

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…forward with the inquiry, and the audience agrees with this impulse, too. It is natural to want to know the truth.

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But at the same time, a feeling of dread creeps over everything as everyone begins to sense that the inquiry will lead to a horrific revelation that will change everything.
Thus, when the final revelation comes and it is shown that Oedipus killed his father King Laius and married his mother, the audience is as shocked as everyone else. They have sympathized with Oedipus for his nobility in pursuing the truth—but the revelation as fills the audience with pity and fear. If a great man like Oedipus can be brought low….....

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