Oedipus Rex is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. The play was first performed during the 420’s B.C. in Athens and is considered one of the great works of world theater.
At the beginning of the play, Oedipus is the popular ruler of the city of Thebes. The city is suffering from a plague. The Delphic oracle, a shrine where the god Apollo foretells the future, tells Oedipus that the plague will end only when the murderer of King Laius is found and punished. Laius was the Theban king who held the throne before Oedipus and was murdered on a road. His killer was never identified.
Oedipus is determined to find Laius’s murderer and launches an investigation. Gradually, Oedipus learns that he was Laius’s killer and that Laius was actually his father. Laius had abandoned Oedipus as a baby on a mountain because the oracle had prophesied that Oedipus someday would kill the king. The two later met on the road, and Oedipus killed Laius without knowing his true identity. Oedipus then traveled to Thebes, where he defeated the Sphinx, a winged female monster who had been terrorizing the city. In gratitude, the citizens of Thebes made Oedipus their king and offered Laius’s wife, Queen Jocasta, as his wife. Oedipus married her, unaware that Jocasta was actually his mother.
Finally, after learning the horrifying truth about his past, the guilt-ridden Oedipus blinds himself. Jocasta hangs herself in shame. Oedipus then leaves Thebes to lead a life of wandering.
Critics and scholars have praised the skillful storytelling in the play, which raises the tension as revelations about Oedipus’s past gradually come to light. The narrative is filled with irony as Oedipus slowly but relentlessly brings about his own doom as he pursues the truth about the death of Laius.
Sophocles continued the story of Oedipus after he leaves Thebes in Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles’s two tragedies have inspired plays by many dramatists, from the ancient Roman author Seneca to the modern French writer Jean Cocteau. The term Oedipus complex has been used in psychoanalysis to describe a child’s unconscious desire for sexual attachment with the parent of the opposite sex and jealousy toward the parent of the same sex. The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud first used the term.
See also Oedipus; Oedipus complex; Sophocles; Thebes.
