10/6 World Literature
OEDIPUS REX (OEDIPUS The KING) by Sophocles (496 B.C.- 406 B.C.)
Aristotle described Oedipus Rex as the model of all drama and the perfect play. From the
structure of Oedipus, all drama is formed.
The play is a TRAGEDY (dramatic literature that explains or shows the downfall of an
individual, frequently someone of high social status) and it portrays the life of its TRAGIC
HERO, Oedipus (“swollen foot”) as he attempts to discover why the people of his city, Thebes,
are sickened, suffering, and dying from pestilence of a widespread plague.
BACKGROUND: (more info on page 462)
KING LAIUS of Thebes, an important and powerful Greek city, learned from an oracle that his
wife would bear a son who would kill him and take his place on the throne. When his wife,
JOCASTA, gave birth to a boy, Laius pinned the baby’s feet together and ordered that the
child be left high on a mountain, exposed to the harsh elements, to die. However, in defiance
of his king, the servant charged with this murder gave the infant boy to a shepherd, who in
turn gave the child to the king and queen of another city province, Corinth. They named him
Oedipus, because of the wounds to his feet, and raised him as their own.
Later in his life, as a young man, Oedipus learned from the oracle at Delphi that he was fated
to kill his own father and marry his mother. Horrified by this prophecy, Oedipus fled from
Corinth. During this flight from his home, in perhaps the original incident of road rage,
Oedipus encounters and kills two occupants of a chariot that he felt had almost run him off
the road. He continued his journey and eventually arrived at Thebes, which was being
terrorized by a monster known as the SPHINX (a horrifying beast with a woman’s head, a
lion’s body, a serpent’s tail, and the wings of an eagle) that has been eating all travelers who
cannot answer the RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX:
“What goes on four legs in the morning,
two at midday, and three in the evening?”
QUEEN JOCASTA, widowed by the death of her husband, in an attempt to save her people,
offers her hand in marriage to any man who can solve the riddle. Oedipus gives the Sphinx
the correct answer, and the monster flings itself into the sea and drowns. Oedipus becomes
the King of Thebes. OEDIPUS REX begins twenty years later, with plague ravaging Thebes, as
Oedipus learns that to end the plague he must discover and exile the murderer of King Laius.