Oedipus the King

Its so crazy to me how the moment that Oedipus interrogates his mother about Laius’ murder–everything begins to unravel. It makes me wonder why the conversation was never had before, if Oedipus only recently having becoming king after his death, had not investigated? But I can understand that the pieces never truly came together as they did now, now that Thebes was plagued with sickness.

With this being my second reading of Oedipus, I am amazed at how Sophocles constructed this story. The possibility of Oedipus not being the murder of Laius starts to dissolve as the story goes on.

Sophocles gives readers some hope that Oedipus isn’t the murder when Oedipus and Jocasta receive news that his father Polybus had died. But this only shows the ignorance of these two characters; they don’t know the whole story but accept any drop of hope they receive.

Sophocles stomps on Oedipus’ and Jocasta’s hopes by unraveling the entire story: who Oedipus thought were his biological parents aren’t, that Oedipus arrived at Corinth as an orphan from the house of Laius, and that ultimately Jocasta had ordered Laius to kill the orphan as it was prophesied that it would grow up to kill his parents.

I find it crazy how Sophocles was able to bring the story back to what feels like the beginning, to the point. All hope of Oedipus not being the murderer of his father who would someday marry his mother–was scraped away little by little until nothing but the truth remained.

Wonderful.