Oedipus Rex is a tragedy written by Sophocles around 430 B.C. and is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy. Oedipus Rex is one of the most profounding tragedy ever written, the book doesn’t simply build suspense and then climax to the point where the audience is then appealed to their emotions, it connects to the human nature on a deeper level where we unconsciously feel the tragedy of the play. The story begins with Oedipus as king of Thebes, it is presumed that he has solved the riddle of the Sphinx and has saved the city from her curse. WHen the story begins, the intended audience is presumed to already know the fate of Oedipus, the art in which Sophocles writes the play is in his language and how he delivers the story. Sophocles delivers the …show more content…
Jocasta’s speech describes the death of Laius as she says “the story goes - robbers abroad have murdered, at a place where three roads meet; while from our son’s birth not three days went by before, with ankles pinned, he cast him out, by hands of others, on a pathless moor.” Oedipus is startled by the fact that Laius was killed at a place where three roads meet, because Oedipus once killed a man at a place where three roads meet. This heightens the suspense, however Jocasta brings up the fact that Laius and her casted their son away from birth and was left to die, so therefore there was no way that the murderer was their son. Because of this point the credibility of prophets were destroyed for Oedipus and he gains back his loses his faith in the words of Tiresias. However as the audience, we understand that the irony present is that Oedipus did kill his father, Laius, at a place where three roads meet, and that he was the child that was cast away by Laius and Jocasta. Just a few lines later irony returns when Jocasta says murderer’s “figure was not much unlike your own,” not knowing that Oedipus was the