Play: Oedipus Rex

Setting and Premise
Thebes is stricken by a devastating plague. Oedipus, the city’s king famed for defeating the Sphinx, vows to save his people once again. He has dispatched his brother-in-law, Creon, to consult Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. The god’s answer is stark: the land is polluted because the murderer of the former king, Laius, lives unpunished in Thebes. Oedipus swears to find and banish the killer, invoking curses on the unknown culprit and setting in motion a relentless investigation.

Unraveling the Mystery
Oedipus summons the blind seer Tiresias, who at first refuses to speak. When pressed and insulted, Tiresias declares that Oedipus himself is the defiler he seeks. Outraged, Oedipus accuses Tiresias of conspiracy with Creon, interpreting prophecy as political intrigue. The Chorus, representing Theban elders, urges moderation, while Jocasta, Oedipus’s queen and Laius’s widow, tries to ease her husband’s fear by doubting oracles. She recounts a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, a fate seemingly avoided because the infant was exposed on a mountain and Laius was said to have been slain by strangers at a crossroads.

Jocasta’s account triggers a disturbing memory: Oedipus once killed a quarrelsome older man at a triple-forked road while traveling away from Corinth, where he had fled after an oracle warned he would kill his father and marry his mother. Believing Polybus and Merope of Corinth to be his parents, he left to protect them, not knowing he was adopted. The details of the crossroads killing align ominously with Laius’s death, but Oedipus clings to hope that Laius was murdered by many attackers, as rumor claimed.

Recognition and Reversal
A messenger arrives from Corinth to announce that Polybus has died of natural causes, relieving Oedipus of part of his dread. Yet the messenger adds that Polybus was not Oedipus’s biological father; he had received the infant Oedipus from a Theban shepherd, his ankles pinned together, hence the name Oedipus, “swollen-foot.” Jocasta realizes the truth before Oedipus does and begs him to stop pursuing it, but he presses on. The Theban shepherd is brought in and, under threat, confesses that he spared a royal infant ordered to be exposed by Laius and Jocasta, handing the child to the Corinthian messenger.

The revelations strike in quick succession: Oedipus is Laius’s son, the killer of his father, and the husband of his mother. Jocasta flees inside and hangs herself. Oedipus, finding her, uses her brooches to blind himself, choosing darkness over the sight of what he has done. His fall is complete, his identity remade by the very truth he sought.

Aftermath
Blinded and broken, Oedipus begs to be exiled to cleanse the city and fulfill his curse. Creon, now poised to rule, shows measured authority and compassion, agreeing to consult the gods. Oedipus asks that his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, be cared for, warning of the stigma they will bear. The Chorus closes with a sober reflection on human fortune: no life can be called happy until its end is known.

Themes and Dramatic Power
The play fuses detective story and tragedy, turning the investigator into the culprit through a masterful chain of irony. Fate operates inexorably, yet Oedipus’s confidence, temper, and insistence on knowledge drive the discovery. Sight and blindness invert as the seer who cannot see perceives the truth, and the clear-eyed king is blind to himself until he chooses literal darkness. Pollution and purification, public duty and private guilt, and the fragile status of human happiness give the drama enduring force.