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Contradictions In Oedipus The King

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Oedipus the King Oedipus the King, the masterpiece of Sophocles, is considered a great tragedy filled with ironies and contradictions between the characters and their personalities. Oedipus is the major character in the story who tries to find out the murderer of Laios who was the king of Thebes. By the time he struggles to solve the problem he is unaware that he is going to find out his own biological father and going to be claimed as the murderer. Actually, this is the main question in this play; how is it possible for Oedipus not to know himself? Is there a really chance that he could not be guilty and be totally innocent? Is there a chance for someone that he/she could be surprised by his/her personality? These are the contradictions that …show more content…

But as the play continues, with Tiresias's arrival the first steps of the reality is taken and Oedipus's story is questioned by Tiresias in page 35 between the lines 497-506 as follows; Since you have thrown my blindness at me I will tell you what your eyes don't see: what evil you are steeped in. You don't see where you live or who shares your house. Do you know your parents? You are their enemy in this life and down there with the dead. And soon their double curse-your father's and your mother's- will lash you out of Thebes on terror-stricken feet. With these lines, Oedipus starts to question his life and history inside but does not reflects it to the people. In fact, he is shocked because of that situation but he can't run away from the truth. So he starts to look for explanation but can't deal with it. The tragedy of Oedipus is really questionable because the reality in Oedipus's soul is unknown but it is clear that he is surprised by life because of the fact that he was not the man that he thinks. This is his prophecy and nobody could have changed it. But the contradiction between his reality and the 'real' reality is dramatic irony as we can see because he was completely unaware of

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In the play of Oedipus the King, the author demonstrates tone and diction by representing elements and rhetorical strategies that enhance the audience's imagination. Each of the characters from this play have concerns towards the knowledge they know. The first characters which are Oedipus and the priest seem to be at peace with each other.

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First his denial of being the source of the plague. Second, his egotistical abilities that will form his plot to change his fate. And lastly, the consequences of his denial that will lead him to his physical and emotional destruction. It would seem that in this case, Oedipus’s fate is his own enemy.

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Oedipus denies the truth and faces the consequences later on in the play. He gets furious when everyone is blaming him for killing Laius. As he is blaming others, hubris appears within his personality. Oedipus becomes blinder as hubris takes over him.

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Having gone through a moment of peripeteia, Oedipus’ story now takes an emotional toll on the audience. After Oedipus has experienced his downfall, his catharsis is set into motion by his desire to make his own final consequence and end fate. Oedipus now carrying the burden of realization about the fate he could never have escaped destroys his mentality and anything he knew about himself. He takes the drastic decision to blind himself with the pins from his mother’s dress after she kills herself, sparking pity in the audience. Oedipus accepted the responsibility for his actions, begging to the Chorus Leader & Creon, “Hide me somewhere outside the land of Thebes, or slaughter me, or hurl me in the sea, where you will never gaze on me again.”

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He is stubborn in resisting the truth but he still seeks for it and that is his final undoing. Wanting to know the truth is not necessarily a bad thing but it is often the cause for bad things to happen. Oedipus is a key example of this when he finally realizes that he was the one who killed his father when he is faced with his dead wife and mother. He reacts harshly to this, stabbing out his eyes and banishing himself all over again. There is no denying that Oedipus caused a lot of his pain himself with no one else to blame.

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Oedipus the King is a tragedy that was written by Sophocles that emphasizes the irony of an irony of a man who was determined to trace down, expose and punish an assassin who in turn became him. Oedipus the King is also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus. The art is an Athenian play that was performed in ages approximated to be 429 BC. Oedipus the King would later in the play fulfill the prophecy that he would kill his father and later on marry his mother. There is a twist of an event in the play where Oedipus is looking for the murderer of his father to bring to a halt the series of plagues that are befalling Thebes but only to find he is in search of himself (Rado, 1956).

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First, he was blind to the truth about his own life. Oedipus had no idea that his real parents were Laius and Jocasta, he was so blind that he got mad at anyone that would even suggest an idea such as that. As the story went on though, Oedipus could no longer run from the truth; he was forced to open his eyes to the reality and truth of his life. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother; he is the brother to his own kids and the son of his own mother. Oedipus was the one that was causing all of the downfall and bad times in Thebes.

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This blindness towards doom is made even more ironic by the fact that he was made king by his knowledge and insight. Oedipus was known as the person who solved the famous riddle of the Sphinx, a monster which terrorized the citizens. As the play proceed, we can see how much of a contrast between the two groups of character there is, even the messengers knows stuff that the king doesn’t. Sentences like “My son, it is clear that you don’t know what you are doing” (Sophocles 55) salutes to the ignorance of the supposedly “wise” king. Using words like “son”, Sophocles gives an sign that even the messenger It illustrates the flaws that exist in Oedipus, amplifies it by comparing him to other who are supposedly

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Sophocles does not provide background information as it would have been common knowledge. Prior to the opening of Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus has left his home and adoptive parents in Corinth in an attempt to escape a prophecy which declares that Oedipus will murder his father and marry his mother. Not knowing that his true parents are Jocasta and Laius, King and Queen of Thebes, Oedipus makes his way towards their city. Along the way, he kills a man travelling with a group who are later revealed to be Laius and his subjects. Oedipus continues and arrives at the Sphinx who has terrorized Thebes until someone solves her riddle.

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So in the end, Oedipus no longer thinks of himself. Thinking of his children 's impending marriage, Oedipus begs for his children and no longer can think of himself as anything more than a creature that embodies what it means to be pathetic: “When you come to the age ripe for marriage, who will he be who will run the risk, children, to take for himself the reproaches that will be banes for my parents and offspring alike? What evil is absent? Your father slew his father; he ploughed his mother, where he himself was sown, and he sired you in the same fount where he himself was sired.

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Brilliantly conceived and written, Oedipus Rex is a drama of self-discovery. Achieved by amazing compression and force by limiting the dramatic action to the day on which Oedipus learns the truth of his birth and his destiny is quite the thriller. The fact that the audience knows the dark secret that Oedipus unwittingly slew his true father and married his mother does nothing to destroy the suspense. Oedipus’s search for the truth has all the tautness of a detective tale, and yet because audiences already know the truth they are aware of all the ironies in which Oedipus is enmeshed. That knowledge enables them to fear the final revelation at the same time that they pity the man whose past is gradually and relentlessly uncovered to him.

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