1. Plan and write your own scene dramatizing an event not staged in the Oedipus Trilogy. You might choose to dramatize the life of Ismene after the events of Antigone, or the encounter of Oedipus with the Sphinx. 2. Choose a scene from one of the plays of the Oedipus […]
Read more Study Help Practice ProjectsStudy Help Essay Questions
1. Near the end of each play in the Oedipus Trilogy, a messenger describes what has happened offstage, usually the most important action in the play. Why do you think Sophocles handles the action in this way? How does the off-stage action — left to the imagination — function in […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsStudy Help Full Glossary for The Oedipus Trilogy
Abae a place north of Thebes, where an oracle of Apollo presided. Acheron a river in Hades, often identified as the river across which Charon ferries the dead. Aegeus a king of Athens who drowns himself when he thinks his son Theseus is dead. Aetolia region of ancient Greece, on […]
Read more Study Help Full Glossary for The Oedipus TrilogyCritical Essays Ritual and Transcendence in the Oedipus Trilogy
In the great amphitheater of Athens, curious tourists can see an inscription on each of the marble seats of honor near the stage: Reserved for the priest of Dionysus. The carved letters, still readable after 2,500 years, attest to the religious significance of the theater in the culture of ancient […]
Read more Critical Essays Ritual and Transcendence in the Oedipus TrilogyCritical Essays The Power of Fate in the Oedipus Trilogy
Are people truly responsible for their actions? This question has puzzled humanity throughout history. Over the centuries, people have pondered the influence of divine or diabolical power, environment, genetics, even entertainment, as determining how free any individual is in making moral choices. The ancient Greeks acknowledged the role of Fate […]
Read more Critical Essays The Power of Fate in the Oedipus TrilogySophocles Biography
Early Years Information about Sophocles’ life is at best sketchy and incomplete, but some important details survive. Most of what scholars know about the playwright comes from two sources: the Suda Lexicon, a tenth-century Greek dictionary, and the anonymous Sophocles: His Life and Works, an undated manuscript found in the […]
Read more Sophocles BiographyCharacter Analysis Eurydice
Creon’s wife appears briefly in Antigone, when she hears of her son Haemon’s death. Pious and discreet, she retreats to the palace, evidently to mourn in privacy, as her nature would dictate. The news that she has cursed Creon and stabbed herself to death shocks the chorus — and the […]
Read more Character Analysis EurydiceCharacter Analysis Jocasta
At once Oedipus’ mother and his wife, Jocasta represents the most immediate victim of Oedipus’ fate, after the tragic hero himself. In contrast to Oedipus, Jocasta distrusts the oracles and believes that whatever happens will happen by unforeseeable chance. Still, she is wary enough to honor Apollo with offerings in […]
Read more Character Analysis JocastaCharacter Analysis Tiresias
The blind prophet of Thebes appears in Oedipus the King and Antigone. In both plays, he represents the same force — the truth rejected by a willful and proud king, almost the personification of Fate itself. Tiresias comes to Oedipus against his will, not wanting to explain the meaning of […]
Read more Character Analysis TiresiasCharacter Analysis Theseus
As leader of Athens in Oedipus at Colonus, Theseus emerges as the ideal king, the personification of the city-state’s vision of itself at its highest point. At the same time of the production of Oedipus at Colonus, such a vision of the ideal Athenian was comforting to the war-torn Athenian […]
Read more Character Analysis Theseus