Athenian Tragedy: Oedipus the King

Many of us know the story of Oedipus. It's the story of a king, Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his own mother, all without him knowing the truth. When the truth is exposed, his mother/wife kills herself and he blinds himself.

Summary

"Oedipus the King" 430 BCE was written by Sophocles. The play is an Athenian tragedy in which that main character, Oedipus the King of Thebes, discovers that he has unknowingly killed his birth father and married his own mother.
His city of Thebes had been devestated by a plague and the only way to rid the citizens of their suffering and cure the plague was to drive the murderer of Laius (Oedipus' father) out of Thebes. Oedipus sought out the help of a blind prophet who revealed that Oedipus himself had been guilty of the murder. When the King shared this info with his wife, Jocasta, she says the prophecy was wrong because Laius was supposed to be murdered by his own son. Laius' baby was cast out of Thebes and Laius was murdered by bandits. As more details unfold, Oedipus realizes he did, in fact, murder Laius....he has only learned half the truth.
Later in the play he finds out that Jocasta and Laius had given up their baby because they had been given a prophecy that their child would kill them. Here is where the play reaches full circle and all of the truth is revelead: Oedipus killed his father and married his mother.
Upon learning this, Jocasta hangs her self and Oedipus stabs his eyes with gold pins from Jocasta's robes until he is blind. The play ends with Oedipus cursing his life and blood streaming from his eyes. 

This play is philosophical because it is based on knowledge, nature, and existence. It investigates the truth, which in this case is the truth of the prophecies and explores both sides of a coincidence. Oedipus is a tragedy, in which the characters downfall is because of a flaw in the judgement or character. The play was both written in Ancient Greece and set in Ancient Greece (though it was set in a fictional setting.) It is written as a play in a somewhat poetic style, because of the almost regular rhythm. 


Authors, composers, and even psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud have drawn from Sophocles' Oedipus the King - including incest, killing one's own father, and the theory that children naturally lust after their mother or father during the phallic stage or psycho-sexual development. 


I've always been interested in this story because I admire Greek Mythology, Philosophy, and Psychology (the Oedipus Complex.) In high school, we had to analyze this play and I thought it was so clever. Did you know Oedipus means "swollen foot"? This is relevant to the story in revealing Oedipus' own identity (his ankles were bound together when he was cast out of Thebes and he suffered a limp from this injury as an adult.) How the play makes a full circle when all is explained in the end is incredible!! Every detail in the beginning of the story adds up to make a mind-blowing ending and makes for a play that went down in history as one of the greatest tragedies ever written. The irony, politics, sex scandal, and murder made for a play that is still admired today.