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SophoclesOedipus Rex
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BetaPages 199-251Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 199-210 Summary
Jocasta asks the Chorus what has been going on, but the Chorus hesitates, wanting to put discord behind them. Instead, Oedipus tells Jocasta his fears. She’s relieved that all this kerfuffle is over a prophecy, for she has proof that “no skill in the world, / nothing human can penetrate the future” (201). For example, once she and Laius received a prophecy that their own son would strike down his father, so they abandoned their baby boy on a hillside with a stake through his ankles. Thus, they subverted the prophecy.
But this revelation startles Oedipus, who questions Jocasta on some of the finer points of Laius’s murder. In particular, he’s interested to know that it happened at a crossroads called Phocis, right before Oedipus arrived in Thebes. Oedipus also asks Jocasta for details of Laius’s appearance, and learns that the old king’s build was rather like his own. All that Jocasta says strikes Oedipus as nastily familiar. “I have a terrible fear,” Oedipus says, “the blind seer can see” (203).
He asks after the sole living eyewitness to the murder. Jocasta replies that this servant begged to be sent away to live in the countryside after he saw Oedipus crowned. Oedipus asks her to recall him. Bewildered, Jocasta agrees, and again asks what’s going on.
Oedipus tells Jocasta his life story. He is the son of Polybus, the king of Corinth, and Merope, a Dorian woman. Once, at a banquet, a man shouted that Oedipus wasn’t his father’s son. Provoked, the young Oedipus went to consult the oracle to learn if this was true. The Oracle refused to answer, but instead gave him a vision of future disaster, warning him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he fled from home. On his way, he came across a travelling party led by a man who looked very like Laius. When this man tried to shove him off the road, the two came to blows and Oedipus ended up killing everyone present.
If Oedipus is indeed Laius’s son, then “what man alive more miserable than I?” (206). His last hope is that the servant will clear his name. One detail gives him hope: The servant’s old testimony that a band of thieves, not a single man, killed Laius. Jocasta pooh-poohs Oedipus’s fears: There’s no way the baby could have survived, she doesn’t believe in prophecy, and all will be fine. She hurries Oedipus inside.
The Chorus sings of the mighty power of destiny, and of the dangers of pride: Those who don’t fear and revere the gods, are setting themselves up for a terrible fall. But they’re uncertain: If these prophecies don’t come true, they’ll never trust an oracle or a prophet again.
Pages 211-234 Summary
Jocasta decides she’ll go make offerings to the gods herself. A messenger interrupts her, bringing both bad and good news. Polybus is dead, so the citizens of Corinth now want to make Oedipus king. Jocasta summons Oedipus to tell him. Oedipus is relieved: This could be evidence against the dire prophecies. Jocasta insists: “It’s all chance, / chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth / can see a day ahead, groping through the dark” (215).
The messenger asks about the terrible prophecy, so Oedipus tells him what the oracle predicted—that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. In that case, the messenger says Oedipus no longer worry about avoiding his mother Merope—she is not his biological mother and Polybus wasn’t his biological father. This very messenger delivered the infant Oedipus to his adoptive parents: A servant of Laius found the infant Oedipus abandoned in the woods with his ankles skewered, and gave him to this messenger, who took him to the king.
Oedipus asks about that servant. The citizen leader is sure that he is the very shepherd Oedipus asked to see—the one who retired after Laius died. Oedipus can tell he’s about to solve the mystery of his birth now, but Jocasta begs him to stop before he finds anything else out. When he persists, she runs away, wailing in grief.
Assuming that he will simply discover that his biological mother was some lowly person, Oedipus is perplexed by Jocasta’s reaction. The Chorus sings another hymn, suggesting that perhaps a god sired Oedipus.
The old shepherd arrives, and everyone confirms he’s the relevant guy. He seems evasive and shifty, unwilling to acknowledge that he knows the messenger and reluctant to talk about Oedipus’s identity. Oedipus commands that the shepherd be tortured until he talks. The shepherd holds out for some time, but at last tells the terrible truth: Jocasta gave him the baby—her own child, Oedipus. She charged the shepherd to get rid of the baby because of the prophecy that he would kill Laius and marry her. Reeling, Oedipus flees the scene.
The Chorus sings a hymn bewailing the brevity of human joy and the horror of Oedipus’s curse.
Pages 235-251 Summary
The Messenger delivers tragic news to the Theban crowd: Jocasta has hanged herself, and Oedipus, upon finding her corpse, has blinded himself with pins from her dress. The citizens are shocked, and pity their miserable king. The messenger warns them they’ll pity him more in a minute. On his way to self-imposed exile, Oedipus will show his mangled face to the crowd.
And so he does. Oedipus appears, lamenting. The Chorus greets him sympathetically, and Oedipus recognizes their voices and thanks them for their compassion. But there’s no real comfort for him anywhere in the world. He must bear a fate worse than death. He begs the Chorus to kill him, but they shrink back, telling him to ask Creon for help; Creon must be king now, so he can decide what to do. Oedipus despairs. How can he win back Creon’s trust after having slandered him?
Creon arrives and shames the watching crowd: Oedipus shouldn’t be out here—no one should have to see him. Oedipus begs Creon to kill him, but Creon decides to consult with the gods before he makes any further moves. Oedipus must wait for whatever comes. Now completely in fate’s power, he can’t even choose suicide. He hopes to be consigned to exile on the very hill where he was found as an infant.
He makes one last request: to embrace his young daughters before he goes. He weeps over them, lamenting that they’ll marry because they carry his curse, and begs Creon to protect them. In response, Creon shrinks from Oedipus’s touch. They must hurry inside to hear the fate the gods’ decree. As his daughters are dragged away, Oedipus mourns, but follows Creon to meet his fate.
The Chorus closes the play, inviting all to look on their fallen king:
Who could behold his greatness without envy?
Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last (251).
Pages 199-251 Analysis
In the first half of Oedipus Rex, Sophocles heavily foreshadows the play’s foregone conclusion, and the audience is in on the horrible joke. This foundation of dramatic irony pays off in the second half of the play, which continues the play’s discussion about fate and free will. Oedipus, Jocasta, and Laius have lived out the gods’ warnings, regardless of their efforts to evade them. Moreover, the choices the three make to escape this foretold fate become the very choices that bring that fate about.
As Oedipus draws closer and closer to the truth, he obstinately refuses to acknowledge it. He refuses to comprehend Jocasta’s horror, pretending that she’s worried only about the possibility that her former husband Laius had a baby with a servant woman. When Oedipus can no longer keep up his willful psychological blindness, he physically blinds himself in a moment of gruesome body horror. The figurative and literal meet as he stabs out his eyes with pins taken from his mother-wife’s dress, enacting his earlier refusal to see the terrible truth about his origins.
There’s a complex knot of meaning here. On the one hand, Oedipus’s inexorable march toward destruction seems to argue for an absence of free will. On the other, it is Oedipus’s own insistence on getting to the bottom of his story that brings his tragedy about. He pushes his need to know forward no matter how many people beg him to stop. While the play makes it clear that Oedipus can’t evade the gods’ decrees, it does not argue that predestination means relinquishing all responsibility. Rather, he and Jocasta experience intense remorse and torturous guilt as fate unfolds—emotions that mean they take the blame for what has happened. When the Chorus asks Oedipus how he managed to so savagely blind himself, Oedipus replies that Apollo ordained his actions—but, that at the same time, he acted of his own accord, with his own strength. The will of the gods and human action is bewilderingly interwoven. Perhaps the question of fate vs. free will isn’t an either/or, but a nasty, paradoxical both.
When the Chorus concludes the play by observing that the only sure freedom from the reversals of fortune is in death, they speak to a dilemma that isn’t just Oedipus’s, but everyone’s.
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