In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the theme of irony plays an important part through the play. What Oedipus does, what he says, and even who he is can sometimes be ironic. This irony can help us to see the character of Oedipus as truly a ‘blind’ man, or a wholly ‘public’ man. A great irony is found in Oedipus’s decree condemning the murderer.
Oedipus says, “To avenge the city and the city’s god, / And not as though it were for some distant friend, / But for my own sake, to be rid of evil. / Whoever killed King Laios might – who knows? – / Decide at any moment to kill me as well. Later he says, “As for the criminal, I pray to God – / Whether it be a lurking thief, or one of a number – / I pray that that man’s life be consumed in evil and wretchedness. ” When we know the truth that Oedipus is the killer he speaks of, this statement becomes very ironic. Oedipus puts himself as his worst enemy, as he says later, “I think that I myself may be accurst / By my own ignorant edict. ” Oedipus makes many ironic statements throughout the play. One of the most poignant is when Oedipus makes a ‘Freudian slip’ and says ‘highwayman’ instead of highwaymen.
This could suggest that Oedipus subconsciously knew that he had fulfilled the prophesy all along and had suppressed this knowledge as it was too horrible. Oedipus first invokes the gods, saying, “I pray the favor of justice, and of all immortal gods. ” Then, when they grant that justice, he damns them: “God. God. . . . What has god done to me? . . . Children, that god was Apollo. ” At the beginning of the drama, Oedipus unknowingly tells the truth again: “Sick as you are, no one is as sick as I. Oedipus confirms this later, after he knows the truth, by saying, “For I am sick in my daily life, sick in my origin. ” It is ironic also that Oedipus saves the city from the plague of the Sphinx and in doing so, he brings on another plague some years later by his very presence. The theme of sight, ‘true’ sight, and blindness also contains much irony. The first instance of this is in the scene between Teiresias and Oedipus. Teiresias plainly says, “You mock my blindness? But I say you, with both your eyes, are blind.
Oedipus, who saw plainly the riddle of the Sphinx, who is a great ruler over the city of Thebes, cannot see his own fate and his own life for what it is. Oedipus is, as Seth Benardete says, the totally public man, he can see the outside world but cannot see within himself, he cannot see the truth. This lacking of the ‘inner’ sight (private) is what gives Oedipus his gift with the ‘outer’ sight (public). He cannot encompass the both of them. When he does learn the truth, he blinds himself, thus destroying his ‘public’ persona, and since he is wholly public, he destroys himself.
The Choragos tells Oedipus, “You were better off dead than alive and blind. ” The use of irony in Oedipus Rex reveals much about the character of Oedipus. We see that Oedipus truly is the ‘public’ man and can only possess one sight, that of the ‘public’ world. This public persona proved to be the end of him when he decreed his own fate to the people of Thebes. The ‘private’ sight, the inward sight, which Teiresias accuses Oedipus of lacking, is perhaps only suppressed in Oedipus, as he makes many ironic ‘prophesies’ of his own hinting that he knows of his true fate.
The ultimate irony of the play is that Oedipus runs from Corinth for fear of the prophesy that he would murder his father and marry his mother coming true, and in running, he makes the prophesy come true. The Delphic Oracle told him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. To avoid this fate, Oedipus ran from whom he thought were his parents, and directly to whom were his real parents, where he did that which he set out to avoid. We see here the futility of trying to avoid the prophesies, another theme of the play. Jocaste says, “you will find no man who can give knowledge of the unknowable.
She then tries to validate her point by telling Oedipus that a prophesy foretold that Laios would be killed by his son, and that highwaymen murdered him, not the baby that she put out to die at three days old. In her ignorant quest to defy the inevitable, to achieve the impossible, she raises the fears and anger of the chorus, who know that the prophesies must come true. There are two prophesies in the play. One, that the child of Laios would murder him, and two, that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. Both Laios and Oedipus went to great lengths to avoid these fates and defy the gods.
Laios sent his son to die on a mountain, and Oedipus left his ‘homeland’ forever. In their actions to defy the prophesy, they set in motion the events which would fulfill them. The Prophesy is truth; it cannot be avoided. However, this does not mean that the fate controls the actions of the man. The Prophesy must be looked at as being out of time, seeing the past, the present and the future all at once. Although the individual controls completely his or her actions, the Prophesy sees these actions in the past, the present and in the future, and reports only the truth.
Maybe if Laios did not question the Oracle, the prophesy would have been different because he would not have sent his child away. However one could never know this, because the prophesy would be an untold tale. Commentary It would be hard to find a play that has been more universally praised than Oedipus Rex (“King Oedipus”). Aristotle considered it the model tragedy, and that opinion has been widely held to the present day. No drama before or since has managed to so successfully combine a rapid, compelling plot, superb characterization, and elegant poetry into such a tight bundle.
The tragedy of Oedipus Rex is not so much that Oedipus commits two horrible crimes; after all, he was fated to do so, and committed them unknowingly. It is, rather, that he, like his doomed parents before him, ran headlong into the destiny he was trying to defy, and then compounded his evils by his imperious refusal to believe the prophet’s declaration of his guilt. Pride was his downfall. The Greeks had a distinct word for this: “Hubris,” a heroically foolish defiance; the feeling that one is beyond the reaches of authority or convention.
Oedipus Rex is notable for its use of dramatic irony: everybody in the audience knows from the start that Oedipus himself is the guilty party he seeks out for punishment. The viewers’ enjoyment comes as they see and hear the facts accumulate, bit by bit, until it suddenly dawns on Oedipus that he is his father’s murderer. The irony is heightened by blind Teiresias’ many tauntings and the chorus’ musical references to “seeing the light” Oedipus, though his physical eyes can see, is blind to the truth; and when he finally does come to see the truth, ironically, he blinds himself.
The first and final – and most tragic and triumphant – irony, however, lies in the implicit acknowledgment that the very quality of Hubris (Oedipus’ arrogance in defying cosmic and priestly authority, fate and prophecy) is the same quality that enabled him to earlier confront and defeat the Sphinx and to save an oppressed city. Oedipus, then, is a hero who pits his pride against both gods and fate in the mold of Prometheus (whose downfall was caused by his sharing the gift of fire with man) and another heroine, Cassandra, who was cursed with the blessing of prophecy.
And indeed, most Greek dramas carry this theme of human paradox. Perhaps the symbolism of the Sphinx, who haunts the background of Oedipus Rex with her simple yet terrible riddle, says all that is necessary: The true enigma of the universe lies not in any exotic intergalactic phenomenon; the greatest mystery begins and ends with man. Oedipus Rex Essay written by Unknown Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, (as translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald), is replete with dramatic devices – one of which is known as Sophoclean Irony. Sophoclean Irony can be divided into two terms: unconscious and conscious irony.
Unconscious irony occurs when a character speaks what he believes is the truth, but the audience (fore-armed with knowledge of the truth) knows that it is not. Conscious irony is evident when a character knows the truth but is reluctant to reveal it: thus, he speaks cryptic lines deliberately intended to be ironic. Both types of irony will be examined in this paper and passages from the text will be cited in support of this thesis. At the moment of his birth, Oedipus received a reading from the Delphic Oracle which stated that the baby was destined to grow up to murder his father and marry his mother.
Shocked, his parents (King Laios and Queen Locaste of Thebes) try to circumvent Hera’s curse by turning the infant over to a loyal servant (The Theban Shepherd) to take to the top Mt. Cithaeron to be killed. After nailing his ankles together and leaving him to die of the elements, the old shepherd relents and hands the child over to a traveling shepherd from Corinth to take back to the childless King and Queen to raise as their own son. For the next twenty years, Laios and Locaste rule in Thebes believing their son to be dead. Unfortunately, Hera sends a drought associated with a sphinx to bedevil Thebes.
A desperate Laios travels back to the Delphic Oracle for a reading. Meanwhile, back in Corinth, Oedipus grows to manhood believing Polybos and Merope (the King and Queen of Corinth) are his real parents. Soon, he too learns of his horrible fate and seeking to avoid it, he flees hi supposed homeland. As fate would have it, along the road, Oedipus meets Laios and kills him in a fit of rage. Thus, he has unwittingly fulfilled the first half of the prophecy. Traveling on to Thebes, Oedipus saves the city from the drought by solving the riddle of the sphinx.
Declared the new King, he marries the widowed Queen (Locaste) – his mother. Thus, he has unknowingly fulfilled the second half of the prophecy. For the next two decades, Oedipus rules successfully in Thebes until Hera sends a second drought to plague the city. After sending his brother-in-law, Creon, back to the Delphic oracle for a reading, Oedipus learns that the second drought will not be lifted until Laios’ killer is found and punished. An over-confident King takes charge of the investigation. At this point, Sophocles begins his play.
Our first example of unconscious irony can be seen in a discussion about Laios by Oedipus and Creon. Oedipus says about Laios: “I know: I learned of him from others: I never saw him. ” (pg. 862, lines 108-109). This passage constitutes unconscious irony as Oedipus believes that he is speaking the truth – that he never met Laios. Of course, the audience, armed with fore-knowledge, know that it is not. Oedipus not only has met Laios (his real father), he killed him at the crossroads “where three highways meet. ” Our second example of unconscious irony occurs a little in the same scene.
