Oedipus trilogy analysis
Oedipus trilogy analysisNovel Analysis of The Oedipus Trilogy
Oedipus Rex, or Oedipus Tyrannus as it is in Latin, could be what we call today a Freudian work of literature. The Oedipus Trilogy was originally written by Sophocles and is meant to be told in a story-telling fashion. But this Grecian tragedy was revised and translated into English by Paul Roche and put into a novel form.
The Oedipus Trilogy is a novel that deals with destiny and fate. The reader is shown a series of events plotted out from which Oedipus cannot escape. When we begin to read this story, we must remember that Greek society was based around myths and legends. They, much like today’s society, had the need to explain everything. Their myths were a way of explaining such things. They had a series of gods and muses and fates to explain why things happened the way it happened. They believed in a force greater than their own controlling their every move. Sophocles took their beliefs and used the Oedipus Trilogy to explore the irony of how the Fates work more closely.
The Oedipus plays are separated into three main plays: Oedipus Rex (The King), Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. The story starts in Oedipus Rex, and the city of Thebes in which he is ruler is in plague. The city calls upon the ruler Oedipus to find a way to stop the plague. At this point in time, it is 15 years after the prophecy given to him by the Oracle of Delphi of his father dying and him marrying his mother. When he hears of this he promises never to return so he may outsmart the fates. He eventually ends up in Thebes through his travels and gets into an argument with an old man. He ends up killing the old man in a brawl. Little does he know that this old man is King Laius, his father. He goes to Thebes where a Sphynx is harassing it’s people for an answer to it’s riddle. Oedipus solves the riddle and the Sphynx throws itself from its perch upon a rock outside the city. Its people make Oedipus the new King. Now he is faced with another challenge, to find the killer and banish him from the city to rid them of the plague.
We are faced with an interesting plot indeed. When Oedipus pledges to find the murderers, he puts himself in the ironic position of having to hunt himself down. The story shows Oedipus following his own tracks until he finds the shepherd who gave the infant Oedipus to the king of Corinth, from King Laius. Once the story becomes clear, Jocasta, his wife, kills herself in a bloody rage and Oedipus stabs his eyes out. Oedipus has Creon, brother to Jocasta, tend to his last affairs and assume kingship of Thebes. When we go to Oedipus at Colonus, the whole story then goes to the eminent defeat of Thebes by whomever...
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