The play opens in front of Oedipus' palace at Thebes. A plague besets the city, and Oedipus enters to find a priest and crowd of children praying to the gods to free them from the curse. A blight, the priest tells Oedipus, has destroyed their crops and livestock - and even rendered their women sterile, unable to have children. The priest implores Oedipus to save the city: “Raise up our city, save it and raise it up” (51). Oedipus tells the collected crowd that even though he knows they are sick, none is as sick and devastated as he: thus clearly identifying himself with Thebes.

Oedipus tells the priest that he has sent Creon to the temple of Apollo to glean from the gods how the city might be saved. Creon then arrives and announces the command from the Oracle: “Drive out a pollution…. Grown ingrained within the land” (98-9) - namely the murderer of Laius.

“Where would a trace / of this old crime be found?” Oedipus asks – Laius was murdered many years ago (108-9). Creon speaks with a messenger who fled in terror from the roadside where Laius was killed. This messenger, in turn, reveals that

…the robbers they encountered
were many and the hands that did the murder
were many; it was no man’s single power.
(123-5)

Oedipus swears to solve the murder, both as part of his duty as king as well as for the good of the city: ‘So helping the dead king I help myself’ (141). All soon exit, save for the chorus. The chorus of children pray to the gods Apollo, Athene, Artemis and Phoebus in the Parode, compare the city of Thebes to a ship whose “timbers are rotten” (169), and beg for help lifting the curse.

Oedipus returns, reiterates his commitment to tracking down the murderer, and commands that anyone who knows the murderer must speak out. He then invokes a curse upon the murderer – “may he wear out his life / in misery to miserable doom” (249). The Chorus advises him to seek Teiresias, a seer, who might be able to better see the purposes of the gods.

Teiresias arrives, led by a little boy, and Oedipus asks him to name the murderer. Teiresias initially refuses, and attempts to leave; Oedipus responds angrily, and Teiresias tells him that even his words “miss the mark” (325). “All of you here know nothing,” Teiresias says, and Oedipus furiously accuses Teiresias himself of being “complotter of the deed” with Creon (348). Teiresias tells Oedipus that Oedipus himself is Thebes’ pollution.

Oedipus rejects Teiresias’ words, and calls him “blind in mind and ears / as well as in your eyes” (371-2) – Teiresias responds simply that these are insults which everyone will soon heap upon Oedipus himself. Oedipus, now suspicious of Creon as a conspirator with Teiresias, outlines his own achievement in solving the riddle of the sphinx. The Chorus attempts to calm down the escalating anger, but Teiresias makes another long speech: Oedipus, he says, does not know where he is, where he lives, whom his parents are, or even who he is, and prophesies that he will be driven out from the city, “with darkness on your eyes.” An argument ensues between Oedipus and Teiresias, in which Teiresias tells him that “in riddle answering you are strongest” (440). Teiresias makes one final prediction: that the murderer will have “blindness for sight” and “beggary for riches”, before being proved both “father and brother” to the children in his house. He and Oedipus exit, leaving the Chorus alone onstage.

Analysis

The opening of the play treats the murder of Laius as a detective story. Indeed, Oedipus speaks of tracks and traces, and the oracle gives little clue as to the events that will unfold. What Oedipus does as the tragic hero, however, is to speed up this revelation of events. Notable too is the literal plague that affects the city as well as the metaphorical ‘pollution’ within it: namely Oedipus himself. Indeed, in Athenian culture, the incest which Oedipus has committed - as well as the murder of his father - would have been considered both crimes against the natural order and crimes against the gods. Incest, of course, still carries a weighty taboo in most societies today. Because he fathered a child with his mother, he has engendered a plague on Oedipus' kingdom, Thebes, which has rendered the women sterile.

What is key to remember in analyzing this opening section of the play is the first glimpse Sophocles’ gives us of Oedipus’ deeper character. Sophocles starts the tragedy when Oedipus’ fortune is at its very height – he has solved the riddle and is a prosperous, respected king with wife and children. Note how many times in this early section of the play he is referred to as Oedipus the ‘great’. Some commentators have also found in Oedipus an unpleasant arrogance or pride – a sense of self-regard – which might be considered a ‘tragic flaw’ (an idea that seems to come from a mistranslation of the word hamartia meaning ‘mistake’). One might also suggest that Oedipus’ pride is manifest in his identification of himself with Thebes, the city - and of the way he takes up the challenge of finding the murderer in order to secure his own kingship.

This is a compelling reading, but it is similarly important to remember that, even at this first stage of the play, Oedipus’ pride does not bring about any of the events that cause the plague. The murder of Laius, after all, happened many years ago, and he already has four children fathered by his mother. Though Oedipus’ own pride is responsible for his ultimate discovery of what he has done, it does not actually cause it. Oedipus’ so-called ‘tragic flaw’ has surprisingly very little to do with his tragic fate.

The play begins with an idiosyncratic juxtaposition: a chorus of children, against the Chorus of the play itself, comprised of old men from Thebes. This contradiction is later played out in the character of Teiresias, an old man (partially male and partially female in myth) led by a young boy. This immediately raises questions of past and future. These questions are especially important, considering that Sophocles’ deliberately begins his play approximately half-way through the Oedipus myth (see ‘The Oedipus Myth’). One of the ways in which of Oedipus’ unknown past is revealed to shape his future involves a continuation of his tragic lineage - his children turn out to be, in bizarre, self-consuming fashion, the same generation as him.

These revelations lead Oedipus to blind himself, leaving him a helpless old man (led around in the Oedipus at Colonos by a child, like Teiresias) exactly in the manner of the riddle of the Sphinx. In one sense, Oedipus ultimately frees himself from blind youth in order to discover painful wisdom. In another sense, Oedipus also goes backward – and realizes he is a child with a mother, as well as a father with a child.

The Chorus wonders who the murderer might be and suggests that now would be time for him to “run / with a stronger foot / than Pegasus” (467-9) as the fates run up “terribly close on his heels” (472). The Chorus also proclaims itself in “terrible confusion”, and doesn’t understand why Teiresias might have attacked Oedipus’ “popular fame” (493). Furthermore, they side with Oedipus, asserting that they would never agree with someone who finds fault with their King, particularly since he solved the riddle of the Sphinx.

Creon enters, having heard the king accused him of wrongdoing. Oedipus enters and further indicts him as the murderer himself, guilty of crafting a plot against him. Creon mocks Oedipus as “obstinacy without wisdom” (549) – but Oedipus replies that his public interest supersedes his private: “you are wrong if you believe that one / a criminal, will not be punished only / because he is my kinsman” (551-3). Oedipus’ belief at this stage is that Teiresias is a vicious liar, and as he was sent by Creon, Creon must be involved in the plot against him.

He and Creon argue, and Creon tells him that they searched for information about Laius’ death but found none. Creon, moreover, informs Oedipus that he is happy with his life and has no reason to plot against him – and reminds Oedipus in a long speech that since there is no proof against him, Oedipus cannot cast such damaging aspersions until fully supported. Creon then tells him that ‘in time you will know all with certainty” (613). Oedipus refuses to listen, and Creon finishes his diatribe by accusing the king of ruling unjustly.

Jocasta enters and berates the two men for airing their private griefs when there is a public crisis. The men repeat their arguments, and she begs Oedipus to believe Creon and to be merciful. The Chorus joins in her pleas, and Oedipus reluctantly lets Creon go. At this stage, each of the brothers think the other is the murderer of Laius.

Jocasta reveals that an oracle once came to Laius and told him that he would be killed by his son, though she too reiterates that Laius “was killed by foreign highway robbers / at a place where three roads meet” (715-6). She tells Oedipus that, three days after his birth, Laius pierced the ankles of the child and had him cast forth “upon a pathless hillside” (720). This news worries Oedipus, for some reason. He asks exactly where the crossroads was that Laius was killed – Jocasta tells him, and describes Laius. “I think I have / called curses on myself in ignorance”, says Oedipus (744-5), fearing he has killed his father. They send for the herdsman who escaped from the murder-scene at the crossroads.

Oedipus then tells Jocasta of Polybus and Merope, his father and mother and king and queen of Corinth. A drunken man, he says, accused him of being a bastard at a feast - and he confronted his parents with this to no avail. Eventually he went to an oracle, which did not tell him of his parentage, but warned him he would sleep with his mother and murder his father. Oedipus then fled Corinth, and at a crossroads, fell into an argument with an old man in a coach. Oedipus “struck him backwards from the car” (811) and killed him. Oedipus now fears that he has killed Laius, his father, and married Jocasta, his mother, but waits for the herdsman to arrive. Oedipus hopes that the herdsman will say that many people killed Laius - for he alone killed the man at the crossroads.

The Chorus criticizes pride, but at the same time hopes for the preservation of the “eager ambition that profits the state” (881). Jocasta returns with garlands for the Theban Elders hoping to go to the temple. A messenger enters from Corinth bringing the news that Polybus, King of Corinth, is dead – and that Oedipus has been chosen as the Corinthian king. Jocasta is delighted, for, if Polybus is Oedipus’ father, the oracle must be false: he has not died at Oedipus’ hands, but rather of sickness. Oedipus reenters, and laughs delightedly, telling the Corinthian messenger of the tragic prophecy he has avoided. The messenger tells Oedipus he had no need to worry: for he was not the son of Polybus and Merope. Rather, it was he - this very messenger - that took the baby from the shepherd, who found him as a baby in the mountains, with his ankles pierced. Oedipus suddenly realizes that the plot has thickened - and he may still be guilty.

Oedipus immediately sends for the shepherd. Jocasta begs him not to “hunt this out”, despite the “clues” Oedipus has suddenly uncovered. It is clear that she has realized what has happened, and she exits. The Chorus ask where she has gone, and Oedipus, calling himself a child of Fortune, boldly challenges the heavens: “Break out what will!” (1077).

Analysis

Everyone is still in the dark as to the true nature of the curse on the kingdom. Only Jocasta, who has gone into the house, has suffered the awful realization of the truth, and her immediate response is to commit suicide to absolve herself of guilt. Oedipus’ long recounting of past history reveals the way that Sophocles has started his play, effectively halfway through the story - precisely, in fact, at the point of greatest prosperity for his protagonist (a fall from great height – since Aristotle, and carried on via Chaucer in The Monk’s Tale – is traditionally part of the tragic construction). The story of the play is much like, then, a detective story: for Oedipus must work backwards in time, creating an emphasis in the early part of the play, and now again, on finding clues and following according lines of inquiry. The criminal Oedipus is seeking, however, is himself.

A central inconsistency appears in the play at this point. The herdsman and Jocasta both believe Laius to have been killed by several people at the crossroads: the story, in the end, reveals that Oedipus himself alone killed Laius. How can Laius have been supposedly killed by one person – and also by many people? Some critics, notably Frederick Ahl, in his Sophocles' Oedipus: Evidence and Self-Contradiction (Ithaca, 1992), have argued that Oedipus did not in fact kill his father, and is talked into taking responsibility for the crime. This is not a particularly convincing interpretation – and one far more likely presents itself both in the play itself and as a device in Greek tragedy as a whole.

Oedipus is searching for Laius’ murderer - and thus is the detective seeking the criminal. Yet in the end, these two roles merge into one person – Oedipus himself. The Oedipus we are left with at the end of the play is similarly both father and brother. Sophocles’ play, in fact, abounds with twos and doubles: there are two herdsmen, two brothers (Oedipus and Creon), two daughters and two sons, two opposed pairs of king and queen (Laius and Jocasta, and Polybus and Merope), and two cities (Thebes and Corinth). In so many of these cases, Oedipus’ realization is that he is either between – or, more confusingly, some combination of – two things. Thus the conflict between “the one and the many” is central to Sophocles’ play. “What is this news of double meaning?” Jocasta asks (939). And indeed, throughout Oedipus, it is a pertinent question.

Yet another of Oedipus’ dual roles involves that of king and man. As King of Thebes, as he states at the start of the play, it is his duty to work to rid Thebes from the dreadful plague which blights it, and – as it turns out – this ends up being an unconscious self-sacrifice. Yet Oedipus, by demanding that Creon exile him from Thebes, does remove the plague (himself) from the city. Ultimately, then, his public role is given priority of his private one. This is further evidenced by the death of his wife (and the later death of his two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles) – in exactly the way that Creon’s public decision brings about the implosion of his family in Sophocles’ Antigone.

Yet significantly, Oedipus does free the city of Thebes from the plague exactly as he initially promises. So though the play is a tragedy in the light of Oedipus' demise, there is a possibility that, for any Athenian who was public-minded enough to see the play from Theban perspective, Oedipus Rex might in some sense be a play with a happy ending.

The Chorus wonders aloud about the origins of Oedipus. An old man is led in by Oedipus’ servants and identified as the herdsman, the man who gave the baby to the Corinthian messenger so many years ago: Oedipus insists on him revealing exactly what he knows. The messenger says that Oedipus is that same baby, who was abandoned by his father and mother - and the herdsman reacts with fear and begs the messenger to hold his tongue. Oedipus threatens the messenger with physical violence, and finally the man confesses that the baby was a child of Laius's house.

Oedipus asks if it was a slave's child or Laius's child, and the shepherd confesses that it was Laius's child - a child that Jocasta gave him to expose on the hillside because of a prophecy that he would kill his father. The shepherd says he didn't have the heart to kill the infant, so he took it to another country instead. “They will all come, / all come out clearly!” cries Oedipus. “Light of the sun, let me / look on you no more!” (1183-4). He has finally realized what has happened and all exit except the Chorus. The Chorus reflects on the mutable nature of human happiness - all happiness, they say, is only “a seeming” and “after that turning away” (1191-2). Nobody can ultimately escape fate.

A messenger enters from the palace with horrifying news. In a long speech, he says that Jocasta went into the palace, went straight to her bedroom and slammed the door, tearing her hair with her fingers. There she cried out to Laius and bemoaned the tragedy of her son/husband. Oedipus, bursting into the palace and demanding a sword, found that Jocasta had hanged herself. Moaning horribly, he cut her down and laid her on the ground. Then he took the gold brooches with which she had fastened her gown, and, thrusting his arms out at full length, gouged his eyes out. Again and again he pierced he eyes until bloody tears streamed down his cheeks. Now he shouts for someone to open the palace doors (presumably the doors of the skene building) and show all of Thebes the man who killed Laius. He swears he will flee this country to rid his house of his curse.

The doors to the palace are thrown open, and Oedipus stumbles out. The Chorus cries out in agony at the sight and hides its own eyes: “this is”, they say, “a terrible sight for men to see” (1298). Oedipus cries out to the city in a voice that hardly seems his own. The Chorus wails that Oedipus is untouchable and too terrible for eyes to see - that he has been punished in both body and soul. Oedipus calls for someone to be his guide. He pleads with the Chorus to lead him out of Thebes and curses the shepherd who saved his life when he was a baby. The Chorus tells him that surely death would have been better than blindness, and Oedipus replies by asking how he could have possibly met his parents in the underworld with seeing eyes. How could he have looked upon children whom he had begotten in sin? He begs the Chorus to hide him away from human sight.

Creon enters, and asks the Chorus to take Oedipus inside: “only kin”, he thinks, “should see and hear the troubles / of kin” (1430-1). Oedipus begs to be cast out of Thebes. Creon replies that he must wait for instructions from Apollo. Oedipus argues that Apollo's instructions were clear: the unclean man must leave Thebes. Oedipus also asks Creon to bury Jocasta properly and to take care of his daughters. But before he goes, he begs to see his daughters once more. These girls, Antigone and Ismene are led in, and Oedipus caresses them with hands that are both father's and brother's. He weeps for the fact that they will never be able to find husbands with this tragic family lineage. With Creon's promise that he will send him away from Thebes to fulfill Apollo's word, Oedipus releases his children and he and Creon enter the palace again.

Alone on the stage, the Chorus asks the audience to remember the story of Oedipus, the greatest of men. He alone could solve difficult riddles and was envied my his fellows for his prosperity - but now the greatest of misfortunes has befallen him. The Chorus warns the audience that mortal men must always “look upon that last day always” (1529). Only after life can one be sure that one’s life is “secure from pain” (1530).

Analysis

Sophocles’ use of dramatic irony takes center stage in the play's third act. Here, the narrative revolves around two different attempts to change the course of fate: Jocasta and Laius's killing of Oedipus at birth and Oedipus's flight from Corinth as an adult. In both cases, an oracle's prophecy comes true regardless of the characters' actions. Jocasta kills her son only to find him restored to life and married to her. Oedipus leaves Corinth only to find that in so doing he has found his real parents and carried out the oracle's words. Both Oedipus and Jocasta prematurely exult over the failure of oracles, only to find that the oracles ultimately proved accurate. Furthermore, each time a character tries to avert a future predicted by the oracles, the audience knows their attempt is futile. As this final Chorus confirms: fate is inescapable.

Even the manner in which Oedipus and Jocasta express their disbelief in oracles proves ironic. In an attempt to comfort Oedipus, Jocasta tells him that oracles are powerless, yet minutes later we see her praying to the same gods whose powers she just mocked (911). Oedipus rejoices over Polybus's death as a sign that oracles are fallible, yet he will not return to Corinth for fear that the oracle's statements concerning Merope could still come true (976). Regardless of what they say, both Jocasta and Oedipus continue to suspect that the oracles could be right, that gods can predict and affect the future. In a way, then, they reflect both the Athenian audience's own ambivalence towards oracles.

Yet, if Oedipus discounts the power of oracles, he values the power of truth. Instead of relying on the gods, Oedipus counts on his own ability to root out the truth - indeed, the opening of the play posits him as a miraculous riddle-solver. The contrast between trust in the gods' oracles and trust in intelligence plays out in this story much like the contrast between religion and science in nineteenth-century novels. But the irony here, of course, is that the oracles and Oedipus's scientific method both lead to the same outcome. Oedipus's search for truth fulfills the oracles' prophesies. Ironically, it is Oedipus's rejection of the oracles that uncovers their power; he relentlessly pursues truth instead of trusting in the gods. As Jocasta says, if he could just have left well enough alone, he would never have discovered his own awful secret.

In his search for the truth, Oedipus shows himself to be a formidable detective, ruthless in his pursuit of solving the mystery. This persistence is the same characteristic that brought him to Thebes; he was the only man capable of solving the Sphinx's riddle. His intelligence is what makes him great, and yet also proves his tragic flaw. Indeed, his problem-solver's mind leads him closer and closer to tragedy as he works through the mystery of his birth. In the Oedipus myth, marriage to Jocasta was the prize for ridding Thebes of the Sphinx. Thus Oedipus's intelligence, a trait that brings Oedipus closer to the gods, is what also causes him to commit the most heinous of all possible sins. In killing the Sphinx, Oedipus is the city's savior, but in killing Laius (and marrying Jocasta), he is its scourge, the cause of the blight that has struck the city at the play's opening. Thus Oedipus Rex has been interpreted both as a warning against knowing more than one needs to know, and as a heroic testament to scientific investigation and truth-seeking. The play bears out both readings.

The Sphinx's riddle echoes throughout the play, even though Sophocles never quotes her actual question. Audiences familiar with the myth would have known the Sphinx's words: "What is it that goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at midday, and three feet in the evening?" Oedipus's answer, of course, was "a man." And in the course of the play, Oedipus himself proves to be that same man, an embodiment of the Sphinx's riddle. There is much talk of Oedipus's birth and his exposure as an infant - here is the baby of which the Sphinx speaks, forced, in this instance, to crawl on four feet as his ankles are pierced. Oedipus throughout most of the play is the adult man, standing on his own two feet instead of relying on others, even gods. And at the end of the play, Oedipus will leave Thebes an old blind man, using a cane. In fact, Oedipus's name means "swollen foot", presumably because of the pins thrust through his ankles as a baby. Oedipus is more than merely the solver of the Sphinx's riddle - he embodies its solution.

Perhaps the most significant example of dramatic irony in this play, however, involves the frequent reference to eyes, sight, light, and perception throughout. Oedipus, of course, cannot see behind him or in front of him. Unlike blind Teiresias, the seer, he is firmly located in the present. Accordingly, then, Teiresias, as he says early in the play, sees Oedipus as blind. The irony is that sight here means two different things. Oedipus is blessed with the gift of perception; he was the only man who could "see" the answer to the Sphinx's riddle. Yet he cannot see what is right before his eyes, blind to the truth, for all he seeks it. Teiresias's presence in the play, then, is doubly important. As a blind old man, he foreshadows Oedipus's own future, and the more Oedipus mocks his blindness, the more ironic he sounds to the audience. Teiresias is a man who understands the truth without the use of his sight; Oedipus is the opposite, a sighted man who is blind to the truth right before him. Soon Oedipus will switch roles with Teiresias, becoming a man who sees the truth and loses his sense of sight.

Teiresias is not the only character who uses sight as a metaphor. When Creon appears after learning of Oedipus's accusation of him, he asks “Were his eyes straight in his head?” (528). Yet Oedipus will be ashamed to look any who love him in the eyes. Indeed, one reason that he blinds himself is because he does not want to have to look on his father or mother in the afterlife. A number of binaries are associated with the idea of sight and blindness: illusion and disillusion, light and dark, morning and night. Time casts its searchlight at random, and when it does, it uncovers terrible things. The happiness of the "morning of light" is an illusion, while the reality is the "night of endless darkness." The Chorus, meanwhile, wishes it had never seen Oedipus. Not only has he polluted his own sight and his own body by marrying his mother and killing his father, he is a pollutant of others' sights by his very existence. When Oedipus enters, blinded, the Chorus tells him he has sprung to a terrible place “whereof men’s ears / may not hear, nor their eyes behold it” (1313-4). Oedipus has become the very blight he wishes to remove from Thebes, a monster more terrible than the Sphinx that must be cast out in order to save the kingdom.

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