John Lennon once said, “There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.” Nowhere does this quote ring more true or more tragically than in Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex. Doomed by a prophesy before birth proclaiming that he will kill his father and marry his mother, the tragic hero Oedipus does everything he can to avoid his fate. However, following in the tradition of Sophoclean Tragedies, Oedipus is helpless against his fate. Oedipus Rex follows the story of how Oedipus comes to realize that he has killed his father and married his mother. The story draws its power from the fact that the audience already knows the story. Few external actions occur in the play. Nevertheless, charged with tragic dramatic irony in its every word
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He is so eager to bring the murderer of King Laios to justice and to save his city that he curses the murderer to a life “consumed in evil and wretchedness” (14) even before he discovers the identity of the murderer. Unlike the audience, Oedipus is unaware that he has actually cursed himself in an attempt to “take the son’s part” (14) to avenge King Laios for “his own sake.” In these moments of intense dramatic irony, Oedipus not only brushes unwittingly and electrifyingly close to his tragic identity as King Laios’s actual son, but also magnifies the stakes and thus the suspense and tragic irony of his ensuing pursuit and damnation of himself. The play continues to unfold at a quick pace, and only two pages later, Oedipus has already found Teiresias, a source of valuable information. With his dreadful curse upon himself still fresh in the audience’s memories, his impatience in forcing Teiresias to reveal the truth that will devastate himself is nerve-wrackingly tragic and ironic. He frantically flits from one persuasion method to another within only a few sentences--from humbly praising Teiresias as the only one who “can guard or save us” (16), to imperiously commanding Teiresias to “not refuse to speak” (17), then back to begging him “in God’s name” (17), and finally, when all patience and
He is so eager to bring the murderer of King Laios to justice and to save his city that he curses the murderer to a life “consumed in evil and wretchedness” (14) even before he discovers the identity of the murderer. Unlike the audience, Oedipus is unaware that he has actually cursed himself in an attempt to “take the son’s part” (14) to avenge King Laios for “his own sake.” In these moments of intense dramatic irony, Oedipus not only brushes unwittingly and electrifyingly close to his tragic identity as King Laios’s actual son, but also magnifies the stakes and thus the suspense and tragic irony of his ensuing pursuit and damnation of himself. The play continues to unfold at a quick pace, and only two pages later, Oedipus has already found Teiresias, a source of valuable information. With his dreadful curse upon himself still fresh in the audience’s memories, his impatience in forcing Teiresias to reveal the truth that will devastate himself is nerve-wrackingly tragic and ironic. He frantically flits from one persuasion method to another within only a few sentences--from humbly praising Teiresias as the only one who “can guard or save us” (16), to imperiously commanding Teiresias to “not refuse to speak” (17), then back to begging him “in God’s name” (17), and finally, when all patience and