Oedipus The King, by Sophocles
(=Oedipus Rex [Latin], Oidipous Tyrannos [Greek])

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Background

• Apollo and Delphi: Apollo as the voice of Zeus
• miasma: blood pollution that infects the family, and for a royal family the city itself
• riddle of the Sphinx: what has a voice and is sometimes 2-footed, sometimes 3-footed, and sometimes 4-footed, yet violates the natural principle that the animal with more feet is the stronger? OR what is 4-footed in the morning, 2-footed in the afternoon, 3-footed in the evening?

Word play & the poetry of paradox: Central from the very beginning: the idea of paradox, of riddling wisdom, of the one-that-is-many: much of the meaning of the play derives from the specifics of the poetic wording

• the riddle of the Sphinx is central background to the tale
• the very first line, in the original Greek, places the word for "new" immediately next to the word for "old" (in your translation, "the new blood of ancient Thebes")
• "Oidi-pous" (Latinized as Oedi-pus for English) in Greek means "swollen footed" (think of octo-pus = "eight footed")
• But we can also analyze Oedipus in at least two other ways:
• oidi- to a Greek sounds like oida, oide = "I know, he knows" (a central theme in the play)
• -dipous to a Greek means the "two-footed one," with obvious associations to the riddle of the Sphinx (another central theme)
• The play is full of other such verbal coincidences: arthra for instance means both "joint" (think of arthritis) and "eye-socket," thus to stick a pin through the arthra has a double meaning, referring both to the exposure of the infant Oedipus and to his horrible blinding. Note further the repeated insistence on the need to "pin down" the murderer, that is, to solve the mystery, with its metaphorical link to "knowing" and "seeing" the light, and with that the obvious link to the "coming into the light" (=birth) of Oedipus and the "going into the dark" (=blinding) of Oedipus.
• But knowing is itself problematized in the Oedipus the King: central to the text is not only what is known and by whom, but what it means to "know"-- what is "true" knowing. Over and over, we find questions like "do I know what I know, do I see what I see, do the blind "truly" see, are the seeing "truly" blind
• Irony: when a remark shows a distance between apparent and intended meaning, that is, where what is literally said is opposite to what seems to be the case. Oedipus seems to have the "irony gene": the text is riddled with ironies. My favorite is when Oedipus, in commenting on the killer or killers of Laius, says  (line 934), "one can't equal many."
You said thieves-- he told you a whole band of them murdered Laius.
So, if he still holds to the same number,
I cannot be the killer. One can't equal many.
(But of course Oedipus himself is exactly the one who DOES equal many, for he is both father and brother, husband and son, etc.)
But there are literally dozens in the play! Here are a few of my other favorites:
156ff, 249f, 284ff, 297ff, 787ff, 946

The functions of the Chorus, and esp. of the choral interludes (the parodos and stasimons in the outline provided)

Often said that the chorus is the poet's voice, the means the poet uses of commenting on the action, that this is what the poet "really" thinks. Sometimes true, but most often not. Some fairly obvious (and rather mechanistic or formal) functions:

• chorus is an "act-dividing song":
• allows for entrances and exits
• allows for the scene to change
• marks the passage of time (as after Oed. and Joc. enter the palace after sending for the messenger, at 954ff)
• chorus comments directly on what is going on (yes, Oedipus, Creon makes sense, you are being too hasty in your conclusion)
• chorus comments less directly (various forebodings, seemingly directed to the audience, important for indicating mood swings much like the use of background music in modern TV and film)

• Example, the first choral interlude at 169ff: the chorus dances a sacred dance and sings a religious hymn that is, in effect, a prayer to the god: to an audience used to the religious associations, this would be a forceful insertion of the central importance of the divine to the tale
• specifically, in that same chorus is the clear introduction of the themes of divinity and esp. Apollo, divine brilliance and insight, divine wisdom that become almost a supernumerary player in the production (visual images of light dominate this chorus: "gold ... brilliant ... golden ... shine ... flame ... fire ... blazes ... golden ... radiant ... burns ... day .... lightning ... light ... golden ... torches flaring ... gleaming gold ... aflame ... lightning ... blazing ... blazes ... burn")
• and note the context: immediately before this chorus, Oedipus declares for himself the central task of the play, "I'll start again-- I'll bring it all to light myself!"
• but also in this prayer are raised the holy dread felt by the chorus, and no doubt conveyed by the music and dance: why, if Apollo, the voice of Zeus, is golden, brilliant, the child of Hope, does he also provoke terror and dread? (The light that is divinity is both divine deliverance -- the light of the truth -- and divine retribution -- the lightbolt that punishes.)

Apollo versus Oedipus: divine versus human knowledge

Apollo: the god who carries fire, light

• light, radiance are Apollo's trademarks: some central sets of association in the play:
• sun, day, clear, blazing, burning
• fever, blazing, burning: sender of plague and the Healer
• intelligence, clear, seeing
• brilliance, poetry
• truth (knowledge), clear, seeing
• divine prophecy, clear, seeing
• (but given by a blind man, or a raving priestess: who among mortals can see the divine light?)
• (Apollo as voice of Zeus, Teiresias as voice of Apollo)
• paradoxically, divine prophecy is described by humans as dark, obscure, riddling, to be brought to light by the clear-sighted brilliance of human wisdom: but is this correct?

• Man of action, caring but haughty: 7ff, 71ff etc.
• Revealer of the truth: 150
• Solver of riddles: 443ff (e.g.)

note esp. his confidence in human wisdom

quick, foreseeing, insightful: an almost superhuman intelligence: he has already sent Creon to the oracle when it is suggested, he has already sent for Teiresias when that is suggested

• But full of human faults too: quick to anger, quick to accuse, first Teiresias, then Creon (and cf. Creon's defence, and Oedipus' haughty replies at 638-705: telling to the democracy witnessing the play)

What has Oedipus done to deserve such awful suffering? Why must he suffer?

1. Often said to be his "hubris/hybris" (both spellings are acceptable). What is hybris? NOT really "pride"-- a poor translation. Rather, it is the quality of not keeping awareness of your human limitations: the opposite of sophrosyne (= "moderation"). Compare the meaning of the saying of Thales inscribed above the temple of Apollo at Delphi: gnothi sauton: "know thyself" = "know that you are not a god, that you have human limitations"

2. Sometimes said to be because of Oedipus' "character flaw": but this is merely a misreading of Aristotle, who in any case lives two or three generations later. hamartia = "error" not "character flaw": this is not to deny that Oedipus HAS character flaws, simply that you can't argue that Aristotle sees this as central to the play

3. Among the reasons for his suffering surely must be divine retribution, in some sense. But exactly what sense is hard to tease out. A prominent reason why Oedipus may deserve divine retribution is hinted at in several places:

• chorus at lines 403ff (page 210): combines themes of hybris and the problem of belief in oracles, though in some particulars the exact relevance to Oedipus is questionable
• Jocasta's several statements doubting the divine wisdom of the oracles: 782ff, 948, 1002f, 1036ff, 1054ff, 1070f
• Oedipus' abuse of Teiresias (the "voice of Apollo") and his final, gleeful agreement with Jocasta on the falseness of the oracles: 1054ff
• is Oedipus made then to suffer so horribly as an example to humans that divine knowledge, and in particular divine prophecy, is a powerful truth?
• it is not, in any case, as though Oedipus has sinned, and is therefore struck down by the gods: but he does, increasingly it seems, have faults, those of hybris and disbelief in the oracles (he is at first depicted as pious: lines 88f)
• Oedipus as a symbol of the times: as a hero, an extreme example: he is supremely intelligent, supremely confident, supremely insistent on the ability of HUMAN intelligence, his human intelligence, to search out the (horrible) truth, to find the solution to the riddle posed by Teiresias
• man learns, by suffering, to honor the gods

• each step taken to avoid the oracles paradoxically brings Laius, Jocasta, Oedipus one step further towards the road to fulfilling the oracle
• what would have happened had they believed in, and not resisted, the prophecy of the god?
• it almost seems that if they had trusted in the oracle, then the oracle would nothave come true?

but the oracle MUST come true! thus man MUST NOT believe it! so why does the divinity tell man this oracle?
• the wisdom that informs this paradoxical world is a riddling wisdom -- where you must disbelieve in order for the word of the gods to become true, where the blind see, and the sighted are blind -- a divine wisdom incomprehensible to humans
• the Sophoclean notion of divine wisdom seems then to assume essential truths beyond the ability of humans to comprehend (rather like certain strains of Christian theology!)

Oedipus

Jocasta

Laius

Polybus

Merope

Sphinx

Teiresias

Apollo

Delphi

Cithaeron

Thebes