Justice In Sophocles 'Oedipus The King'

In this play, Oedipus is doomed from the very beginning of his life due to his parents’ disobedience of the oracle’s orders. Oedipus is in constant search for justice for he is seeking the murderer of the previous king, Lauis. He is not aware that what he was seeking would lead to the downfall of his kingdom.
Oedipus killed Lauis and became king. Since every king needs a queen, he married the current queen, Jocasta. What he did not know was that Lauis and Jocasta are his biological parents. He believed that his parents were Polybus and his wife, but he was given to them when he was barely born. When Oedipus grew into an adult, he decided to go visit an oracle. the oracle told him that he was going to kill his father and marry his own mother. …show more content…
Everybody was looking at him so solve the plague problem, and he was trying to uncover the truth behind the killer of Lauis. Oedipus’ seek for justice brought many arguments and accusations of innocent people, as well as the death of his mother/ wife and later on, his own. Oedipus had children with Jocasta and everything ran smoothly; however, he later grew curious about what had happened to the previous king. He orders messengers to gather answers to know the truth. He is later informed by a messenger that the previous king was killed in the road so he decides that justice is to be made and the killer is to be punished. He gathered oracles and others to help him seek the truth. He asks the oracles if they know anything about the killer and they only respond by avoiding the question and warning him by telling him that he does not need to know and that it is not important to him. However, he is stubborn and continues to question them in order to achieve justice and they still continued to respond the same way. He saw this as them being responsible for his death and accused them of murder. Of course, the oracles knew everything and they had nothing to fear, but the accusations made them aggravated. They had enough after a while and told him that he was the …show more content…
In addition, even though that at the end of the play he discovered that he was the one at fault, he did not back down from the consequences of justice and accepted his fate. In other words, Oedipus is successful in his search for justice; however, he suffered greatly because of it. His search of the truth and the way he reacts to it throughout the play plays a big role when it is viewed as a whole. When he is receiving the information that Lauis is his father and that he killed him, he responds in such a way that most normal people in his situation would. When thinking about it in a logical sense, it is understandable because he was under the impression that his parents were far away from him and that his dad was Polybus not Lauis. In addition, he was correct to react in such way. In this section of the play, Oedipus is not being given straight forward responses and this frustrates him when what he is seeking is important to him; however, the oracles know the outcome of them telling him so they play around the ball because they want to protect him from the very own “justice” he seeks. Towards the end, when he uncovers the truth, he kept the promise of justice that is deserved for the crimes that have been committed. Even though that he knows that what he has done was done without knowledge and intention, he knows that the punishment must fit the crime, so