Oedipus Rex Research Paper

When you think of a king you will typically think of a wealthy ruler who owns an amazing city and is either beloved by his fellow townspeople, or known as tyrant across the land.

Oedipus was in the beloved category, he was the man who defeated Sphinx, the monster who plagued Thebes and became king in doing so. But his city was not amazing. It was actually the opposite. The town, even after Oedipus defeated Sphinx, was still plagued with misfortune. The book Oedipus the King, was written by a man named Sophocles. In this book, Oedipus solves the impossible riddle by Sphinx, and becomes kings. But by doing so, an ancient prophecy is revealed and as a result of Oedipus becoming king, the prophecy becomes true and lead the city into more grief.

Most, I would hope, wouldn’t kill anyone and with the right mindset, you don’t have to have sex. This is how Oedipus ignorant. After discovering the prophecy he runs away from home, killing a man in the process and marrying the previous queen. After marrying the queen he has four children. And even after he hears the prophecy he tries to say that the people who told him the prophecy are lying to him. After Teiresias tells Oedipus that he is damned to this prophecy, Oedipus say the following “I didn not know then you would talk like a fool-or it would have been long before i called you; How needlessly your riddles darken everything; I do not care, if it has saved this city” (506-516) With this in mind I, believe that after hearing a terrible prophecy like he has recently been told , the best thing is to listen to the prophet you called down and see if there is another way into which he could have stopped all the terrible things happening, but since Oedipus is ignorant, to which he also admits, “O god , I think I have called curses upon myself in ignorance” (852-853) Still hee does exactly what the prophecy foretells, he sends his the prophet away and him and his city suffer the

What are the chances of becoming a king who in turn, had to kill his father, who he didn't even know was his father, and marry and have children with the mother, that he also didn’t know was his. What were the chance of the prophecy even being about him? Or him having a prophecy at all? Oedipus is just what we call unlucky. The first unlucky thing that ever happened to him was his parents hearing the prophecy and then hanging him by his foot to a tree. Then following that an shepherd takes him away on basically the opposite side of which his parents are. Then he hears his prophecy, which is kind of irony seeing that if he never heard the prophecy, it would've never came true. After hearing his prophecy he journeys past the crossroads, where he kills his father ( not the adopted one, but the one who was king) then solves a riddle by the monster Sphinx, to which makes him king, to which he marries the now widowed queen ( his mother) and has multiple children with. Oedipus admits this was his in a long monologue on page 12 (897-968) to his wife which, after hearing the news, kills herself. Now that's just bad luck. So as you can see, any one thing changed from the time he was born to when he killed his father would have made the prophecy not come true, for instance, if his parents just killed him, or the shepherd didn't take him in, or he never heard the