Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

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Characters:
Oedipus, King of Thebes
Laios: Oedipus' father; former king of Thebes
Jokasta: Oedipus' mother/wife
Tireseas: Prophet of Apollo
Kreon: Jocasta's brother
Chorus
Herdsmen
Antigone and Ismene: Oedipus' daughters

Themes/Dichotomies
Blindness (literal and figurative) vs. Seeing
Hubris vs. Humility
Fate vs. Human Action
Gods vs. Mortals
Reason/Passion
Luck
Xenophobia

Other Terms:
Strophe
Antistrophe
Peripeteia: reversal of fortune
Anagnorisis: A recognition
Hamartia: A fatal flaw

Irony: Words used to convey a meaning that is contradictory to its literal meaning.
Allegory: Representation of religious or literary content in a different form or context.
Dramatic Irony: When the protagonist does not know his fate, but the audience does.

Backstory: Once upon a time in Thebes, King Laios and Queen Jokasta had an infant son. They heard not long after of a Delphic Oracle, which predicted that the child would grow up to marry his mother after killing his father. Concerned about the likelihood this would come true, King Laios took the child out in the wilderness to die of exposure. To ensure that the infant didn't crawl away, Laios pinioned the child's feet together. Unfortunately the legend mirrors reality here: in the Ancient world, unwanted children were abandoned to the elements.

Fortunately for Oedipus, a gentle shepherd found the boy and took him in. Later, King Polybos and his queen, Merope of Korinth adopted the boy and raised him as their own son. One day when Oedipus was grown, he heard the Oracle that he would one day murder his father and marry his mother. He ran away to Thebes. Then, "at a place where three paths crossed," Oedipus encountered a man in a chariot and the two had a confrontation. Oedipus killed the man, not knowing he was in fact Laios, his father.

Oedipus then returned to Thebes, where he encountered the Sphinx: a creature that was part human female, part lion, eagle, and snake. The Sphinx would not allow anyone into Thebes unless he could answer her riddle: What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and on three legs in the evening? Oedipus was the only one to answer correctly: "Man." After having defeated the Sphinx, Oedipus was honored as a hero. He then married Laios' widow, Jocasta.

As the play opens, Oedipus has ruled Thebes for many years. He and his wife have had four children. However, a plague has swept the city, and it has destroyed crops, livestock, and human lives. The citizens turn to Oedipus to do something to stop the plague.

In reading Oedipus Rex, one encounters a personality of the king that is prideful and often arrogant; he flaunts his deeds and courage; he ignores the advice of sages and goes stubbornly forward to meet his fate. As Athenian audiences watched Oedipus seal his own fate, they may have been much amused at this dramatic irony: the protagonist's unwitting testimony to his own fate. As he presses the blind prophet Teiresius to tell him the truth of Laios's killer, Oedipus unknowingly condemns himself.

The king's relentless pride is what the Greeks called hubris: a pride that precedes a downfall. Our text observes that many critics see Oedipus Rex as a "tragedy of fate" in which a powerful man is brought down by "destiny or the gods." In truth Athenian audiences were often drawn to themes in which the mighty experience a fall. Nevertheless, Sophocles' appropriates the myth which "can be seen as a story about the inevitable unfolding of divine will" and takes it toward a new dimension of an inherited curse: one in which the focus of our attention shifts from mere retelling to the king's experience in finding out what he has done--and the legacy he leaves in his wake.

Readers may be faced with a taxing question of whether Oedipus can be blamed entirely for the fate that befalls him, or to what extent the protagonist invited these tragedies upon himself. Important to note when deciding questions of the king's responsibility is the distinction Greek philosophy observes between "moral culpability" and "religious pollution": that is, the differences between evil that is carried out knowingly and deliberately, and an insidious evil that "afflict[s] even those who are morally innocent" (704). Readers must decide for themselves whether Oedipus is a tragic figure, a pitiable character, or a morally bankrupt character. How we read Oedipus himself goes a long way to determine what themes convey the most meaning for us.

The Iliad: Synopses of Books II-VI

Book Two:

Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon in an effort to aid Achilles. Nestor visits Agamemnon and convinces him that he should launch a full-scale assault on Troy. The following day when he gathers his troops, Agamemnon decides to test their fidelity by announcing that he has ‘given up the war’ and will return to Greece. He is surprised when his soldiers turn and desert.  Hera observes this and calls on Odysseus whose powerful rhetoric convinces the troops to return. He reminds them of the prophecy of Calchas, who witnessed a watersnake devour a nest of nine sparrows, who concluded that the war would rage on for nine more years before the Achaens took Troy.

Book Three

As the Trojan army steadfastly approaches the Achaens, Paris, in a fit of bravado, challenges a single combat between a Trojan and one of the Achaen warriors. When Menalaus steps forward, Paris retreats back into Trojan ranks. When Paris’s brother Hector repudiates him for his cowardice, Paris agrees to fight the Spartan king, reasoning that this duel will decide who will claim Helen.

Meanwhile, the messenger goddess, Iris disguises herself to visit Helen at the Trojan royal palace. Iris persuades Helen to go to the city gates and observe the battle over her. King Priam asks Helen to identify some of the Achaen soldiers, but the king doesn’t linger: he is unable to watch the duel between Paris and Menelaus.

The two opponents commence a knock-down, drag-out duel: Menelaus breaks his spear on Paris’s helmet and proceeds to drag the young prince through the dirt. Aphrodite witnesses this scene and magically severs the strap of Paris’s helmet and whisks the young man away, leaving Menelaus to search in vain for him on the battlefield. Agamemnon is convinced that Menelaus has won the duel and Helen should be returned to her husband.

Book Four

On Mt. Olympus the gods are at a stalemate as to whether to accept the truce that has been reached, or to provoke the war to rage on. Hera is not satisfied to accept the truce, as she has invested so much toward Achaen support: she will not rest until Troy has been destroyed. Zeus initially resists, but later relents, sending Athena down among the troops, disguised as a Trojan, to incite further battle. The goddess cajoles an archer to fire an arrow at Menelaus, but she deflects the arrow, leaving Menelaus with a flesh wound instead.

Further battle and bloodshed ensues, this time with Athena aiding the side of the Achaens and Apollo on the side of the Trojans. Various other gods infiltrate the battlefield disguised as mortals.

Book Five

Pandarus wounds Diomedes, an Achaean hero; Diomedes calls on Athena for help, and the goddess of wisdom grants him the ability to distinguish gods from mortals on the battlefield; however she cautions him not to challenge these gods, save for Aphrodite, who sides with the Trojans—for obvious reasons. Diomedes brutally kills the archer Panarus and wounds Aeneas (later to become the protagonist of the Aeneid). When Aphrodite, Aeneas’s mother comes to avenge her son, Diomedes recognizes her and wounds her as well: he cuts her wrist, for which she hurries back to Mt. Olympus to her mother Dione, hoping for a little sympathy. Instead she receives taunts from Hera and Athena, and a stern talking-to from Zeus about interfering in war doings. Dione heals the wound. Meanwhile on the battlefield, Apollo steps in to take Aphrodite’s place, and Diomedes wounds Apollo as well—summarily breaking his vow to Athena, in which he swore not to challenge any god on the battlefield. Apollo takes Aeneas from the battlefield, leaving a likeness in his place, and calls on Ares (Mars), the god of war, to aid in the effort. Fighting with the gods alongside them, the Trojans have a decided advantage and wage on to hoped victory.

Hector and his divine ally, Ares form a formidable scene in battle--so terrifying in fact that Diomedes is intimidated. Sarpedon, a Trojan, and Zeus's son kills Tlepolemus, Acheaen. Tlepolemus is the son of Hercules and Zeus's grandson. More slaughter ensues on either side: Trojans and Spartans lose great numbers until Athena withdraws her order to Diomedes not to challenge the gods in battle; she even joins him in his attack on Ares. The collision is cataclysmic; Ares returns to complain to Zeus, but Zeus insists that Ares got what he asked for. All gods return to Olympus and the mortals are left on the battlefield.

Book Six

Now that the gods have left the battle, the Achaens gain the advantage over the Trojans, who now retreat. Menelaus contemplates a ransom from Adrestus, but his brother Agamemnon insists he kill the man instead. Nestor advises that the Achaen troops continue fighting with a fury while they maintain a lead in the battle; the sage Helenus instructs Hector to return home to Priam and Hecuba, and to ask his mother and her noblewomen to make an offering to Athena. The goddess ignores the offering and their plea for mercy. Hector speaks with Paris, who has retreated from the battleground. Helen and Hector upbraid Paris for sitting out of battle until he is shamed into returning. 

Before returning to battle, Hector visits Andromache, his wife, and their infant son Astyanax. Andromache nervously oversees the battle going on in the distance and begs her husband not to return. Hector argues that it is his fate to return--a fate he cannot escape. He kisses his son, who initially shrieks at the sight of his father's helmet. Hector leaves his wife who is convinced he will not return. She begins to mourn the loss of her husband. 

The 'backstory', if reconsidered in light of the developing story, lends fresh interpretation to Achilles' character and his role as hero. 

In the years leading up to the battle between the Trojans and the Spartans, the god Zeus fell in love with a sea goddess called Thetis. Zeus discovered a prophecy that revealed that if he were to wed Thetis, she would bear him a son that would become 'more powerful than its father.' Fearing the potential of being overpowered by his own offspring, Zeus demurred. 

Later, when Thetis married Peleus, a Myrmidon (mortal), the goddess Iris (Eris) hurled a golden apple into the crowd. The fruit was inscribed 'for the most beautiful.' Paris discovered the apple and promised it to one of the three prominent goddesses: Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. Though all three claimed the apple as her own, Paris awarded Aphrodite. And, we know the rest (1). 

Note that the oracle that dissuaded Zeus from pursuing Thetis did not name the father. What does this suggest about Achilles?

Further, as the battle develops in the fifth book while Achilles retreats and sulks, Diomedes appears to take on the role of hero of the piece in Achilles' absence; yet Diomedes never seems to reach the same level of prominence as does Achilles. What conclusions can be made concerning 'fate' and its role in the Iliad? Recall that Diomedes had assistance from the gods in battle where Achilles did not. 

Another question for consideration: though the gods initially take either a hostile or indifferent role in the lives of the mortals, they intercede considerably in the fourth and fifth books, using mortals as tools, or instruments to serve their own agendas. However, when they leave the battlefield, the Aechaens have the upper hand. How do the gods' actions help us to understand the role of fate in the development of this battle? Aeneas is a clue.

All the military characters seem to be war-weary in many ways: i.e., Agamemnon’s troops leap at the chance to drop the war and return to their ships; then there is the hope that a duel between Menelaus and Paris will end the war. However, scholars point out that the gods seem to be the only characters enthusiastically urging on the battle. How can we comment on this aspect of the narrative in terms of human plight and human virtue? 

The Trojans gain an advantage when the gods intercede in battle, yet when the gods depart, the Achaens gain momentum. What can we interpret about the Achaens' ability to succeed in battle without the help of the gods? Could the narrative suggest something about the 'rightness' or 'righteousness' of the Achaens' plight? 

The Babylonian Creation Epic: Enuma Elish

From Tablet I

When on high no name was given to heaven,

Nor below was the netherworld called by name,

Primeval Apsu was their progenitor.

And matrix-Tiamat was she who bore them all,

They were mingling their waters together, 

No canebrake was interwined nor thicket matted close.

When no gods at all had been brought forth, 

Nor called by names, none destinies ordained,

Then were the gods formed within the(se two).1

*Akkadian: known from cuneiform inscriptions, is the oldest Semitic language for which records exist. It was used in Mesopotamia from about 3500 bc; two dialects, Assyrian and Babylonian, were widely spoken in the Middle East for the next 2,000 years, and the Babylonian form functioned as a lingua franca until replaced by Aramaic around the 6th century B.C.

The Enuma Elish is an creation epic that dates to the 18th century B.C.E., written in Akkadian cuneiform. Its original focus was to portray Marduk's emergence as a supreme king of the gods. Like many creation myths, the Enuma Elish bears distinct ethnocentric leanings: while it envisions the creation of heaven and the underworld, the creation of earth begins with the culture's own capital (here, Babylon) as the center of civilization. 

Here, King Marduk (aligned with the Babylonian god Shamash) experiences apotheosis: he is elevated as a supreme ruler of heaven and earth, and makes his palace in Babylon the lodging house of the gods. As in many creation epics, the Enuma Elish offers explanatory narratives for the emergence of the human race, here, the blood of Qingu, a royal consort and war criminal is shed to create humanity and to alleviate this task from the gods. Notably, the Enuma Elish prefigures the royal family and its constellary figures as the center of creation. 

Questions for discussion:
What makes the Enuma Elish different from the other creation epics we've read so far? 

What is the nature of Marduk as king and supreme god? 

What is his role concerning other, lesser gods? 

What does this creation epic tell us about the values and concerns of this civilization? 

1. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Volume A. 34.