Oedipus Rex Analysis

hello students today we're going to discuss Oedipus Rex by Sophocles we'll begin with a short overview of the play in case you were unclear and in the of the finer points the play begins when a when a plague has descended upon the city of Thebes now really the play begins with some action that happens offstage before the play before the curtain rises which we call antecedent action in this case the antecedent action is that Thebes is previous king a man named Laius was off traveling and was murdered on the streets and it was always unsolved no one ever knew who did it and after Laius was murdered the kingdom of Thebes was left undefended and was attacked by a monster called the Sphinx you may have heard of the Sphinx before and so a hero from a neighboring Kingdom named Oedipus decides that he will come and try to defeat the Sphinx and help out the people of Thebes and so Oedipus does in fact defeat the sings by solving its riddle and as he arrives in Thebes as the conquering hero he meets the previous Kings Widow named Jocasta and Oedipus and Jocasta fall in love and get married so by marrying the queen of Thebes Oedipus becomes the new king of Thebes and and it's at that point that the play begins because now a plague has descended on Thebes and no one is quite sure how to solve it so as many kings would during this time when there was a serious problem in their kingdom Oedipus calls the Oracle or the seer or wise man to help him the wise man's name is Tiresias and he comes to Oedipus and tells Oedipus that to cure the plague he must find Leia's murderer in Oedipus says well how can I do that how can I find the man and the Oracle tells Oedipus you were the murderer of King Laius and none of us says no way there's no way I could have murdered him I've never even met the man I certainly didn't didn't kill him so they dismissed the Oracle and Oedipus and Jocasta talk amongst themselves and Oedipus says you know Oracle's don't know anything in fact one time an Oracle made a prophecy that I would kill my own father and marry my mother and to prevent that from happening Oedipus says as soon as I heard this prophecy I left my home Kingdom I left my parents and ran away and I ran here I ran to Thebes and that's when I killed the Sphinx and during the course of the Oedipus Rex Oedipus's adoptive father we learned dies of natural causes like a heart attack or old age and so Oedipus's there's no way Oracle's can know what they're talking about because my father died from natural causes at this point Jocasta agrees and she says yeah there's no way that Oracle's could really exist because an Oracle ones prophesied to me that my first son with Laius would would come up and grow up and kill Laius and marry me and to prevent that from happening when we had our son our baby we pinned his feet together and basically threw him into the wilderness we had a servant throw him into the wilderness to die so there's no way that he could have killed Laius and married me now at this point both Oedipus and Jocasta are looking at each other going okay so they both of their stories sound a little bit familiar to each other and now and Jocasta says there you know there's no way that that Laius my husband was killed by you because he was killed by a bandit at the place where three roads meet now at this point Oedipus realizes the truth that he had in fact accidentally killed the man on his way into the kingdom and it so happened that that man was the king so now all that's left is for Oedipus to figure out if he was in fact the king's son and it turns out that instead of throwing their baby to die Jocasta and weighs his baby to die the messenger pinned his feet together but then gave him to this shepherd thinking oh that shepherd will take care of him and that shepherd gave the baby with his feet pinned together to a new shepherd and that's that shepherd happened to know the king and queen in the neighboring kingdom and then gave Oedipus this baby Oedipus to this king and queen to race so Oedipus was in fact the son of Laius and Jocasta and so he did in fact kill his father and marry his mother and then fathered children with his own mother after the facts are revealed Jocasta kills herself and then Oedipus blinds himself with some pins from her dress okay so let's talk about the play and analyze it a little bit so Oedipus is a traditional tragic hero let's talk about some of the features that make him a tragic hero first of all tragic heroes are always highly placed in society so they're going to be princes or kings or Dukes and this is so that they have a lot to lose so the bigger they are the harder they fall Oedipus was that already the Prince of a neighboring Kingdom and then becomes the king of Thebes and at the beginning of the play is in fact a well-loved King because everybody loves that he defeated the Sphinx and saved them from this terrible monster so Oedipus is highly placed he has a beautiful wife he has beautiful children so he has a lot to lose next Oedipus is a proud and arrogant man we know this because when the Prophet comes to Oedipus and tells him you know you're going to kill your father and marry your mother Oedipus thinks that he can outsmart that prophet he thinks that by running away from his home he can outsmart fate more or less furthermore when Oedipus's brother-in-law Creon brings the the seer the Oracle to Oedipus and the Oracle says Oedipus you're the guy who killed the King Oedipus instead of taking responsibility blames his brother Creon and he accuses Creon of trying to overthrow him with this prophecy so he's very arrogant he believes he could outsmart fate and he believes he can accuse others and blame things on others finally he does what what many tragic heroes do which is that he causes his own fate his own death by trying to dodge it so again by trying to dodge killing his father marrying his mother he runs away from his home into thieves and by on the road to thieves kills his father and then meets Jocasta and marries her so he in a way he causes his own downfall and we call this dramatic irony so in those ways Oedipus is a very traditional Greek tragic hero next let's talk about how the play itself is a traditional Greek tragedy so first of all it abides by the rules of tragedy and that uses the unity of time and place so that means that the the whole play only takes place over a single day so that would be the unity of time on page 16 Tiresias says this day shall give you birth and death and one and and by that he means the in one single day you'll realize your birth meaning who you were born from who your parents are and death it also basically dooms Oedipus at the end and of course his wife dies in terms of unity of place the whole play takes place right outside the doors of the kingdom so sort of on the Kingdom steps that's a traditional place where the townspeople would have gathered where the king would have made decrees and so on and so forth so the play does use unit to your time in place secondly the play makes use of irony we've already talked a little bit about irony so Oedipus's deeds have the opposite of the desired effect right so by trying to dodge his fate he ends up causing his fate Oedipus also says several things that have the opposite of desired effect so at one point on page pages 9 and 10 Oedipus says he's talking about the the man who killed Laius and calls the plague before he knows it was him he says all men from their houses banished him since that is he contaminates us all and on the guilty head I imprecate that whether by himself he has lain convert or joined with others without happiness evil and evil he may pine and die so Oedipus says I basically cursed this killer whoever he is that he should die without happiness and suffer and then Oedipus says for myself I pray if within thine which he could become an inmate of my dwelling that I may suffer all I invoked so Oedipus says if I find out that this guy was and was an inmate of my dwelling meaning he was somebody in my house under my roof I hope that I suffer all the means stuff I just said happens to him and in fact we know that Oedipus himself as the killer so he basically is making a prophecy about himself he just doesn't know it's him yet so again we would call this irony next the play includes hubris which is tragic pride so again edifice accuses everyone of wrongdoing but cannot see it in himself which is a feature of tragic pride or hubris the Oracle Tiresias says on page 13 my offence you censure but your own at home you see not and yet you blame me so ty Ricci says you're going to point the finger at me and accuse me of being a liar but you can't look inside your own home and see how you have committed offenses against the kingdom finally the play includes a moment of enact norisse's which is the moment that the tragic hero realizes that everything that's gone wrong is his own fault and of course at the end of the play Oedipus and Jocasta both have that moment where they realize that they by trying to avoid their fates have actually caused their fates to be fulfilled well finish by talking about the symbolism used in Oedipus and its legacy the main symbol in Oedipus is this idea of blindness versus sight so of course one of the main characters in Oedipus is Tiresias who is an Oracle and like many Oracle's in that time he was a blind man and blindness they believed in ancient Greece actually sometimes gave people wisdom so by getting rid of your earthly sight you could have a kind of extra sight that where you could see people's souls and people's fates and people's futures so by by being blind the Oracle actually has better sight than anyone and of course Oedipus who has perfect sight can't see what's right under his nose that he himself is a killer so we have this idea of pride making Oedipus blind and humbleness and humility making Tiresias the Oracle being able to see so we have a reversal of sight and blindness the legacy of Oedipus Rex and one of the reasons that we still study it today is something called the Oedipus complex now this this phrase wasn't coined until thousands of years later when a German psychiatrist named Sigmund Freud coined the term Oedipus complex and he coined this term because Freud believed that subconsciously every man had a secret desire whether or not he even knew it himself he had a desire to kind of kill or overcome his father and then sleep with his mother and so Freud believed that Oedipus wasn't it wasn't just accidental that Oedipus happened to kill his dad on the road and marry his mom but in fact it was a fulfillment of his sort of secret subconscious wishes and Jocasta and a business wife and mother kind of confirms this theory in the play on page 36 she says that maternal wedding mean marrying your mother that maternal wedding have you no fear for many men ere now have dreamed as much so Jocasta says don't worry if you've thought about marrying your mom lots of guys think about that and it's no big deal so Jocasta actually confirms this theory of Freud's that all men have this desire to kill their fathers and sleep with their mothers and you may agree or disagree so I hope you enjoyed reading Oedipus and that this analysis gave you some further insight into play as always email me if you have further questions

Channel: Katie Bickham

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Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2017