Oedipus The King

A detailed Summary of Oedipus The King

Throughout history there have been many great tragedies written. To better understand a tragedy one must first know the rules of a tragedy. In every story or play there must be a noble hero, who inturn has a tragic flaw. The time period of most tragedies is within a twenty-four hour period and teaches an important lesson. Something bad, that causes chaos, happens to the hero to change the route of the story. The entire tragedy goes from order to chaos or a reversal of fortune takes place. This is known as peripateia. Oedipus the King follows all of these rules. Everything from the hero to the important lesson learned is in this tragedy written by Sophocles in 425 B.C.

Oedipus the King takes place within a twenty-four hour period like most tragedies. The history line of the story is much longer but the actual events happen in one day. There is no concrete evidence of this, but by reading and looking for small clues one can tell. For example the phrase the next day or that morning or anything of that nature is never mentioned in the play. So one must take it as all of this happened in a short amount of time.

In the tragedy Oedipus the King, the noble hero is Oedipus. He fits the qualities that a tragic hero mus

The peripateia that occurs is the fact that everything the Oracle in the story predicted came true. Even though Oedipus's parents and foster parents try to prevent this, it still happens. When Oedipus finds out for himself the prediction of his life, he tries to prevent it himself by leaving what he thought to be his home country. When the story goes to chaos is when Oedipus starts to believe that he was responsible for his father's death and starts to investigate it further. Oedipus confesses to Charagos about killing some men some years back and he is worried that they might have been the king and his companions. "I killed them all. Now if that stranger and Laios were - kin, Where is a man more miserable than I? More hated by the god? Citizen and alien alike must never shelter me or speak to - I must be shunned by all." He knows that by confessing he could be exiling himself, but Oedipus wants to know the truth. This is where the play takes a dramatic turn from organized to chaos. Oedipus starts to fear what he done, so long ago. He feels loneliness and hatred for himself. Finally realizing the truth his wife, who is also his mother, confronts him and tells him to leave it all alone, to forget all of it and never seek out the truth. He does find the truth and returns to the castl

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 869
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Oedipus The King

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