Suicide In Oedipus Rex And Antigone

In Sophocles’ two tragedies, Oedipus Rex and Antigone, suicide is eminent in both tragedies, when a main character committed suicide it caused other characters to do the same. From Jocasta to Haemon‘s mother Eurydice, they all killed themselves. In the very beginning of Oedipus Rex, Jocasta hung herself when Oedipus found out that he married his own mother and murdered his father which caused him to stab his eyes out. In Antigone, the deaths of Eteocles and Polyneices unintentionally caused Ismene to refuse to help Antigone bury Polneices, Antigone committed suicide after forced in an engagement with the son of King Creon, Haemon, causing him and his mother‘s suicide as well. In these tragedies, suicide is a sign of both an internal conflict and external expectation. In the trilogy, there is also a connection between honor and suicide in Sophocles’ plays.

In the last act of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to find out more about the infant that Jocasta, threw out and the herdsman who found the forsaken infant. Within he was feeling troubled finding out the truth that the infant was him and not wanting to accept it, discovering that he murdered his own father, and his wife was also his mother lead him to become blind, exiled, and the tragedy ended with a cathartic conclusion. Jocasta’s conflict within is brisk, learning she is the mother of her own husband, and an attempted murderess. She’s conflicted with herself for abandoning the infant Oedipus, who was prophesied to bring destruction to Thebes, and horrified when she learns that she married her own abandoned son. With her overwhelming conflicted feelings, she runs from the scene, the next scene reveals that she hung herself. In Sophocles’ final tragedy of the Oedipus cycle Antigone, the internal conflict and external expectation start at the very beginning of the