Jocasta is the queen of Thebes. She is married to Oedipus, the king of Thebes. Little did Jocasta and Oedipus know when they got married is that, Jocasta is Oedipus’s mother. The reason they did not know this very important piece of information is because Laius, Jocasta’s other husband, and Oedipus’s father had gotten a prophecy. The prophecy was that someday, Laius would be killed by his own son. So they took Oedipus and bound his ankles together and gave him to a Shepherd. They both thought that their son had died that day. He lived and was adopted, and Laius’s prophecy will someday become true. Jocasta seems like a bad person for marrying her own son, but she didn't even know that her so was alive. She had absolutely no idea that
The authority which Oedipus and Jocasta defy is the same. Both the king and his mother defy the authority of the gods by trying to evade their edict. The edict states that a son would be born to Jocasta who would marry his mother and kill his father, as Oedipus says, “How mating with my mother I must spawn a progeny...having been my father's murderer.” (OEDIPUS, Oedipus, 44). When Jocasta hears of this, she attempts to kill the baby Oedipus, thus trying to escape the prophesy. Similarly, when Oedipus, as an unmarried adult, hears that he would kill his father, he runs away from his home town, Corinth, never to return. Oedipus and Jocasta both defy the gods' authority, which in this case comes in the form of running away from a menacing prophesy. In the end, however, Jocasta dies and Oedipus is overthrown and ruined.
Antigone and her family have suffered many things. It all began with her father, Oedipus. Oedipus has a very confused life. He ends up killing his father, the king of Thebes, while he believes his father is someone else. He ends up as the king of Thebes and married to his mother, Jocasta.
A detective story is a genre of fiction in which a person attempts to solve a crime. The detective may be a professional or an amateur, and generally has nothing to gain from solving the crime. However in Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King”, the main character Oedipus is not only determined to solve a crime, but he is also in pursuit to find his own identity. This is similar to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” where Sherlock Holmes has been hired to work as a detective in return for monetary compensation. Both situations enable Oedipus and Sherlock to gain from unraveling the mysteries that sweep their towns hence making these stories different from most detective stories.
The play's plot, in a nutshell, develops like this. After solving the riddle of the Sphynx, who had kept Thebes under a curse of some kind, Oedipus is invited to become king of the city. He marries Jocasta, the widow of the previous king, and they have two children. When the play begins, Thebes is again under some sort of curse, and Oedipus tries to find out its cause so that he can rescue the city. He is told that the cause of the curse is that the murderer of the previous king is still in the city and has gone unpunished. In the process of searching for the murderer, Oedipus discovers that it is he, himself, who is responsible and that he is actually the son of Jocasta and her previous husband. Horrified by his sins of incest and murder, Oedipus claws out his eyes. Jocasta commits suicide because she is so disgraced.
Born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta in the city of Thebes, Oedipus is surrounded with controversy after a prophecy shows that Oedipus will be destined to murder his father and marry his mother. Fearing the potential consequences of the prophecy, Oedipus’ parents made the decision to abandon their baby at the top of a mountain to die using one of their servants. The servant’s consciousness, however, causes him to instead deliver the baby to a shepherd, who in turn sends him to King Polybius and Queen Merope of the kingdom Corinth. After raising the child as their own, Oedipus becomes suspicious that these weren’t his biological parents and leaves Corinth upon hearing the prophecy by the oracle Delphi. As he unknowingly travels to his birth city, Thebes, Oedipus murdered a man along with his servants after a dispute between them. Before entering Thebes, Oedipus is confronted by the guardian of the city’s Gates, the Sphinx who presents him with a riddle. If he solves the riddle, he will be able to pass. If he doesn’t, he’ll die. Oedipus’s superior intelligence and cleverness allows him to easily solve the riddle, however unbeknownst to him will be a foreshadowing of his tragic downfall. The citizens of Thebes praise Oedipus and Queen Jocasta offers to marry him since her husband was mysteriously murdered. Upon marry Jocasta and becoming the King of Thebes, a powerful plague decimates the citizens of
Continuing on his way, Oedipus found Thebes plagued by the Sphinx, who put a riddle to all passersby and destroyed those who could not answer. Oedipus solved the riddle, and the Sphinx killed herself. In reward, he received the throne of Thebes and the hand of the widowed queen, his mother, Jocasta. They had four children: Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone, and Ismene. Later, when the truth became known, Jocasta committed suicide, and Oedipus, after blinding himself, went into exile, leaving his brother-in-law Creon as regent. The central theme in this work is that one cannot control his/her fate, whether the intentions are good or bad. Oedipus, the main character in this play is motivated to find the truth, and his intentions are good. The motivation is always followed by the intentions, just as the truth is followed by goodness. There are three critical parts to Oedipus's motivation. There is the prophecy, the realization, and the revelation. They will be discussed consecutively.
In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Oedipus is depicted as a morally ambiguous character; neither purely evil or purely good. Oedipus runs from his fate initially to prevent himself from pursuing what he believed was his fate; however, he is lead straight towards his real fate. He kills his biological father as he is headed to Thebes, where he takes the throne. Once he has taken the throne, he begins to try and save his city from the plague by looking for the murder of king Laius. However, what he does not know is that the prophet has told him who has slew the king; therefore, he presents his ignorance as a leader. Not only does his ignorance create the flawed character inside himself, but it also causes him to run from his fate. The significance of Oedipus being a morally ambiguous character is that he cannot run from his fate
Oedipus is doomed to his fate so he uses his freewill to purge the truth (WowEssays). He uses this illusion to control his life so he doesn’t feel so scared of the prophecy ever coming true. He goes to his hometown Thebes to get away from the prophecy, and while he was on the road he murders his father not knowing that it was his real father, fulfilling one part of the prophecy. When he arrived in Thebes he married his own mother, Jocasta, and believed he was the king of Thebes. Jocasta believed her son, Oedipus, was dead, but as pieces of information began to fit she realized she had married her son and that the prophecy was coming true. Nevertheless, Jocasta’s blindness lead her to commit suicide.
While still traveling, Oedipus had come to the city of Thebes. There, he saved the city from the wrath of the Sphinx by solving her riddle. Seen as a savior by the citizens of Thebes, Oedipus was made king and subsequently, the husband of Jocasta. Oedipus and his wife-mother ruled together and had four children while never knowing of the true relationship between each other.
After discovering she married her son, Jocasta makes the choice to kill herself. Nothing intervened or predicted her death, it was her choice.
Oedipus finds out that he is the killer of King Laius and will become the archetypal sacrificial scapegoat for the city of Thebes. Throughout this passage from the play, Oedipus is continually gathering incriminating evidence against himself from the source of his own wife and mother, Jocasta. He discovers through her attempted reassurance that his quest from Corinth set his fate to be the killer of his biological father and the sacrificial scapegoat for the welfare of the people and land of Thebes.
This essay will illustrate the types of characters depicted in Sophocles’ tragic drama, Oedipus Rex, whether static or dynamic, flat or round, and whether protrayed through the showing or telling technique.
Here is a story where Oedipus the King, who has accomplished great things in his life, discovers that the gods were only playing with him. He has everything a man of that time could want; he is king of Thebes, he has a wonderful wife and children, and great fame through out the lands. He has lived a good life, but in the end everything is taken from him.
Jocasta’s compliance to the demands of the men around her is revealed through her constant role as a nurturing mother, one who provides emotional connections, but cannot make decisions. This role spans throughout the entire prophecy, throughout her entire life, and throughout her roles as Oedipus’ mother and then his wife. With the arrival of the prophecy that her and Laios’ son is destined to kill his own father and marry his own mother, Jocasta had to leave her child to essentially die in order to evade the prophecy. A mother’s first instinct is typically to protect her child at all costs; however, Jocasta goes against this by actually putting her child in danger in order to protect her husband. This instance proves that the husband seems to be the main focus. Every action seems to be to p...
The play Oedipus the King by Sophocles has often been described as the story of a “tragic hero.” This story is indeed tragic; however, Oedipus is not the only character stricken by tragedy. Equally stricken may be the character of Jocasta. She, as well as Oedipus, suffers many tragedies throughout the story. Shifting the story to a different perspective quite possibly may increase how we view it. The point is not to denounce Oedipus’ role as a tragic hero, but to denounce his role as the only tragic character.