Dramatic Irony In Oedipus Rex

The ironic life of Oedipus Rex Irony can be used in a range of different ways to get a certain point across to your audience. In Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King, Sophocles’ use of dramatic irony has a very strong presence. The story is about Oedipus, the King of Thebes, and he is trying to find a cure for his city that has been marked with a plague. A seer tells the king that the plague is a result of a man who has killed his own father. The furious Oedipus is then committed to find and punish the man who was responsible for this awful crime. An important part of the plot is that when Oedipus was just an infant, his birth parents received a prophecy that said he would kill his own father and sleep with his mother. In …show more content…
The dramatic irony lies in the fact that the killer is searching for nobody but himself unknowingly. This is the announcement that elevated the tragic effect of the discovery, which comes towards the end of the play. Oedipus says to the herdsman “may I look my last upon you, shown monstrous in my birth, in marriage monstrous, a murderer monstrous in those I killed” (715.1185-89). As the play nears the end Oedipus realizes that he the one who killed the king and that the prophecy had been fulfilled because the people who thought were his real parents were his adopted parents. Oedipus comes and tells the city that in fact he is the one who killed the king and was sleeping with his mother and will except the capital punishment. What an ending to a life that is full of confusion and dramatic