MTA 104 ("Understanding Theatre")

Walter Metz

Reading Notes: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (425 B.C.) 

A Structural Reading of Oedipus Rex

Prologue

Leadership: Oedipus is condescending to his citizens. He calls them "his children." (51, 1)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Oedipus Rex is a play about extremes. The Priest tells us that "Thebes is in her extremity." (52, 1)

Gods vs. Humans: Oedipus and the Gods are linked often in the play. Here, the Priest tells Oedipus that he's the human they turn to when the Gods are of no help. (52, 1)

Talk vs. Action: Oedipus doesn't delay. He's already sent for Creon by the time to Priest suggests doing so. (52, 2)

Public vs. Private: Creon wants to discuss the matter in private; Oedipus sees no reason they can't hold an open meeting. (52, 2)

Leadership: Oedipus considers himself the selfless representative of the citizens: "It is for them I suffer, more than for myself." (52, 2)

Detective Story: Oedipus Rex is a detective story: When Creon tells Oedipus about the murder of Laius, Oedipus wants to find clues: "Where shall we find a clue / To solve that crime, after so many years?" (53,1)

Leadership: Oedipus is very arrogant. When confronted with the problem of the dying city, he says "Then once more I must bring what is dark / to light" referring to his solution of the riddle of the Sphinx. (53,1)

Parodos

The Chorus delivers the News to us. The plague is so bad that women can’t carry their babies to term ("And groaning mothers can not bear"). (53,2)

Scene 1

Detective Story: "Until now I was a stranger to this tale, As I had been a stranger to the crime. Could I track down the murderer without a clue?" (54,1)

Irony: Oedipus accidentally curses himself, forbidding anyone in the town to speak to the murderer of Laius. Oedipus imagines a friend of his being the murderer, but not himself. (54,2)

Irony: Oedipus actually solves the crime without knowing it: "I take the son’s part," not knowing that he already took the son’s part when he killed Laius. (54,2)

Talk vs. Action: Oedipus is again impatient: He has summoned Tiresias the seer even before the Chorus suggests doing so. (55,1)

Truth: Tiresias is one of the characters who knows that Truth is not always the best path: "How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be / When there’s no help in truth!" (55,2)

Leadership: Oedipus has a conservative notion of patriotism: "What you say is ungracious and unhelpful / To your native country." (55,2)

Leadership: The State is at risk: "You would betray us all and wreck the State?" (55,2)

Paranoia: Oedipus accuses Tiresias ("And I’ll tell you what I think: You planned it, you had it done, you all but Killed him with your own hands") (55,2)

Truth: Tiresias defends the Truth: "I have gone free. It is the truth sustains me." (55,2)

Recognition: Tiresias tells Oedipus that he’s the murderer: "I say that you are the murderer whom you seek." (56,1)

Sight vs. Blindness: "You are blind to the evil." (56,1)

Paranoia: Oedipus now thinks that Creon has been plotting against him ("Put in my hands unsought—if for this power / Creon desires in secret to destroy me") (56,1)

Truth: Oedipus believes in the Truth: "Has your mystic mummery ever approached the / truth?" (56,1)

Leadership: Oedipus’ pride (he’s better than the gods): "What good were they? Or the gods, for the matter / of that? / But I came by, / Oedipus, the simple man, who knows nothing-- / I, thought it out for myself, no birds helped me." (56,1)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Chorus’ middle-ground: "We can not see that his words or yours / Have been spoken except in anger, Oedipus, / And of anger we have no need." (56,2)

Sight vs. Blindness: Tiresias gets mad at Oedipus mocking his blindness ("But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind") (56,2)

Melodrama: Concern for parental lineage: "My parents again!—Wait: who were my / parents?") (56,2)

Incest: "To the children with whom he lives now he will be / Brother and father—the very same; to her / Who bore him, son and husband—the very same / Who came to his father’s bed, wet with his / father’s blood." (57,1)

Strophe/Antistrophe

Leadership: The Chorus still believes in Oedipus: "Shall I believe my great lord criminal / At a raging world that a blind old man let fall? / I saw him, when the carrion woman faced him / of old, / Prove his heroic mind! These evil words are lies." (57,2)

Scene 2

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Chorus mediates, defends Oedipus against Creon. (57,2)

Truth: Creon believes in the facts. (58,1)

Leadership: Creon call Oedipus stubborn. (58,1)

Talk vs. Action: Creon withholds judgement, waits until the facts are in (58,2)

Leadership: Creon tells Oedipus he doesn’t want to be the leader because he likes power but not the responsibility that comes with it: "Would any sane man prefer / Power, with all a king’s anxieties, / To that same power and the grace of sleep? / Certainly not I. / I have never longed for the king’s power—only / his rights." (58,2)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Creon says he has a sober mind: "Besides, no sober mind is treasonable. / I hate anarchy / And never would deal with any man who likes it." (58,2)

Talk vs. Action: Creon believes in slow, careful judgements: "For time, and tome alone, will show the just man, / Though scoundrels are discovered in a day." (58,2)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Chorus encourages patience: "This is well said, and a prudent man / would ponder it." (58,2)

Talk vs. Action: Oedipus on the other hand, detests inaction: "Would you have me stand still, hold my peace, / and let / This man win everything, through my inaction?" (59,1)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Jocasta, like the Chorus, tries to settle Creon and Oedipus down: "Let us have no more of this tumult over nothing." (59,1)

Strophe/Antistrophe

Talk vs. Action: Chorus urges Oedipus to settle down and listen to Jocasta (59,1)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Chorus wants to wait for "final proof." (59,2)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Oedipus says that he hates Creon (59,2)

Extremes vs. Middle-ground: Creon takes the mature path: He realizes that such hot-heads "torment themselves" (59,2)

Human Suffering: Chorus is tired of suffering (59,2)

Recognition: Jocasta tells Oedipus the story of her newborn son’s exile.   Oedipus begins his recognition: "How strange a shadowy memory crossed / my mind, / Just now while you were speaking; it chilled my / heart." (60,1)

Sight vs. Blindness: Oedipus: "I am not sure that the blind man can not / see." (60,2)

Leadership: Oedipus finally decides he needs some advice (60,2)

Recongition: Oedipus tells Jocasta the story of how he killed the man on the road.   Oedipus realizes that he is the one that killed Laius (61,1)

Talk vs. Action: Chorus still wants to wait for all the facts: "You have yet to hear the shepherd." (61,2)

Ode 2

Leadership: Chorus prays for the State and its Leader to be protected (62,1)

Religion: Chorus laments the decline in religion: "Their hearts no longer know Apollo, / And reverence for the gods had died away." (62,1)

Scene 3

The Messenger arrives. (62,2)

Recognition: Oedipus still not completely aware of his guilt: He’s thinking of the wrong father (63,1)

Psychoanalysis: Jocasta calls worrying about the Oedipal Trajectory silly: "A man should live only for the present day. / Have no more fear of sleeping with your mother: / How many men, in dreams, have lain with their mothers! / No reasonable man is troubled by such things." (63,1)

Recognition: The Messenger tells Oedipus that Polybos was not his father. The Messenger reminds Oedipus of his wounded ankles (63,2)

Melodrama: Oedipus demands that, "It is time tings were made / plain." (64,1)

Truth: Jocasta is against knowing the Truth. She demands that Oedipus forget: "Forget this herdsman. Forget it all. / This talk is a waste of time." (64,1)

Truth: Oedipus believes in the Truth; Oedipus as detective: "How can you say that, / When the clues to my true birth are in my hands?" (64,1)

Silence: Chorus fears silence. (64,2)

Luck: Oedipus resorts to relying on Luck: "But I / Am a chilkd of Luck; I can not be dishonoured." (64,2)

Truth: Oedipus cannot see why truth-seeking could possibly ever be the wrong course: "How could I wish that I were someone else? / How could I not be glad to know my birth?" (64,2)

Scene 4

The Shepherd arrives (65,1)

Truth: The Shepherd yells at the Messenger, desperately trying to withhold the Truth (65,2)

Truth: Oedipus violently wants the Truth (65,2)

Recognition: "It was true!… Oedipus, damend in his brith, in his marriage / damned, / Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand!" (66,1)

Ode 4

Proto-Existential: Chorus: "What measure shall I give these generations / That breathe on the void and are void / And exist and do not exist?" (66,1)

Sight vs. Blindness: Chorus: "Blind I was, and can not tell why" (66,2)

Exodos

The Second Messenger arrives (66,2)

Humans bring about their own trouble: Second Messenger: "The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves" (66,2)

Off-Stage Action: Jocasta has killed herself off-stage (66,2)

The action is narrated to us: Second Messenger: "For you did not see it; but I, who diud, will tell you / As clearly as I can how she met her death." (66,2)

Incest: "She close the doors behind her; then, by that bed / Where long ago the fatal son was conceived-- / That son who should bring about his father’s / death-- / … And heard her wail for the double fruit of her marriage, / A husband by her husband, children by her child." (67,1)

Off-satge Action: Jocasta hangs herself (67,1)

Off-stage Action: Oedipus blinds himself (67,1)

Human Suffering: Oedipus gives human suffering a name and a face: "The misery of mankind that has a name-- / And it is wholly and for ever theirs." (67,1)

Sight vs. Blindness: Oedipus: "The pain of the spikes where I had sight, / The flooding pain / Of memory, never to be gouged out." (67,2)

Strophe/Antistrophe

Free-Will: Oedipus’ blinding himself was a free-will choice: "Apollo. Apollo. Dear / Children, the god was Apollo. / He brought my sick, sick fate upon me. / But the blinding hand was my own!" (68,1)

Humans vs. Gods: Oedipus believes the gods hate him (68,1)

Sight vs. Blindness: Chorus: "Your fate is clear, you are not blind to that." (68,1)

Truth: The Truth brings destruction: Chorus: "Would God you had never found it out!" (68,1)

Fairness: What is the just punishment? Chorus believes death ("You were better dead than alive and blind") while Oedipus believes blindness. (68,1)

Incest: Oedipus: "Ah, the net / Of incest, mingling fathers, brothers, sons, / With brides, wives, mothers: the last evil / That can be known by men; no tongue can say / How evil!" (68,2)

Creon vs. Oedipus: Creon promises that he won’t mock Oedipus (68,1)

Public vs. Private: Creon still believes in privacy: "No, take / him / Into the house as quickly as you can. / For it is proper / That only the close kindred see his grief." (69,1)

Fate: Oedipus preserved by Fate (69,1)

Parental Lineage: Oedipus weeps before his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, whom he has ruined: "And when you come to mariageable age, / Where is the man, my daughters, who would dare / Risk the bane that lies on all my children?" (69,2)

Sterility: "And your lives must wither away in sterile / dreaming." (69,2)

Talk vs. Action: Creon still believes in patience: "Time eases all things." (69,2)

Creon vs. Oedipus: Creon is mean to Oedipus; he does rub it in: "Think no longer / That you are in command here, but rather think / How, when you were, you served your own / destruction." (70,1)

The Moral: Chorus delivers the Moral: We must wait until death to judge a man’s complete life: "Cinsider his late day; and let none / Presume on his good fortune until he find / Life, at his death, a memory without pain." (70,1)

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This page was last updated on July 18, 2001

Questions or comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send an e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman