Oedipus Rex (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Prologue

Oedipus Rex begins outside King Oedipus’s palace, where despondent beggars and a priest have gathered and brought branches and wreaths of olive leaves. Oedipus enters and asks the people of Thebes why they pray and lament, since apparently they have come together to petition him with an unknown request. The Priest speaks on their behalf, and Oedipus assures them that he will help them. The Priest reports that Thebes has been beset with horrible calamities — famine, fires, and plague have all caused widespread suffering and death among their families and animals, and their crops have all been destroyed. He beseeches Oedipus, whom he praises for having solved the riddle of the Sphinx (an action which justified his succession to King Laius, as Jocasta’s husband and as king) to cure the city of its woes. Oedipus expresses his profound sympathy and announces that he sent Creon, the Queen’s brother, to Delphi to receive the Oracle of Apollo, in order to gain some much-needed guidance.

Creon arrives and Oedipus demands, against Creon’s wishes, that he report the news in front of the gathered public. Creon reports that the gods caused the plague as a reaction against the murder of their previous king, Laius, and that they want the Thebans to “drive out pollution sheltered in our land”; in other words, to find the murderer and either kill or exile him (Laius had been killed on the roadside by a highwayman). Oedipus vows to root out this evil. In the next scene, the chorus of Theban elders calls upon the gods Apollo, Athena, and Artemis to save them from the disaster.

Act I

Declaring his commitment to finding and punishing Laius’s murderer, Oedipus says that he has sent for Teiresias, the blind prophet. After much pleading and mutual antagonism, Oedipus makes Teiresias say what he knows: that it was Oedipus who killed Laius. Outraged at the accusations Oedipus calls him a “fortuneteller” and a “deceitful beggar-priest.” Both are displaying what in Greek is called orge, or anger, towards each other. Oedipus suspects the seer of working on Creon’s behalf (Creon, as Laius’s brother, was and still is a potential successor to the throne). Teiresias thinks the king mad for not believing him and for being blind to his fate (not to mention ignorant of his true parentage). Oedipus then realizes that he does not know who his real mother is. Teiresias is led out while saying that Oedipus will be discovered to be a brother as well as a father to his children, a son as well as a husband to the same woman, and the killer of his father. He exits and the Chorus enters, warning of the implications of the decisive, oracular charges against Oedipus.

Act II

Creon expresses great desire to prove his innocence to Oedipus, who is continues to assert that Creon has been plotting to usurp the throne. Creon denies the accusations, saying he is quite content and would not want the cares and responsibilities that come with being king. Oedipus calls for his death. Jocasta, having heard their quarrel, enters and tries to pacify them, and the Chorus calls for proof of Creon’s guilt before Oedipus punishes him. Jocasta reminds Oedipus of Apollo’s oracle and also of the way Laius died. She recounts the story as it was told to her by a servant who was there at the crossroads where a charioteer and an old man attacked a man who in turn killed them. Hearing the tale, Oedipus realizes that he was the murderer and asks to consult the witness, the shepherd, who is sent for. The Chorus expresses its trust in the gods and prays to Heaven for a restoration of faith in the oracle.

Act III

Jocasta prays to Apollo to restore Oedipus’s sanity, since he has been acting strange since hearing the manner in which Laius’s died. A messenger tells her that King Polybos (the man Oedipus believes to be his father) has died and that the people of Isthmus want Oedipus to rule over them. Oedipus hopes this news means that the oracle is false (he hasn’t killed his father since Polybos has died of old age), but he still fears that he is destined marry his mother. The messenger tells him that Polybos was not his father and that he, a shepherd, had been handed the child Oedipus by another shepherd, one of Laius’s men. Jocasta tries to intervene and stop the revelations, but Oedipus welcomes the news.

Act IV

The shepherd enters and tells Oedipus, after a great deal of resistance, that he is Laius’s son and that he had had him taken away to his own country by the messenger so as to avoid his fate. The chorus bewails the change in Oedipus from revered and fortunate ruler to one who has plunged into the depths of wretchedness.

Act V

A second messenger reports that Jocasta has just committed suicide, having realized that she was married to her son and thus had given birth to his children. He also reports that the king, suffering intensely upon hearing the news of his identity, blinded himself with the Queen’s brooches. Oedipus has also requested that he be shown to the people of Thebes and then exiled; he comes out, bewildered and crying, asking for shelter from his painful memory, which cannot be removed as easily his eyes could be.

In the darkness of his blindness he wishes he were dead and feels the prophetic weight of the oracle. His blindness will allow him to avoid the sight of those whom he was destined to wrong and toward whom he feels immense sorrow and guilt. He asks Creon to lead him out of the country, to give Jocasta a proper burial, and to take care of his young daughters, Antigone (who comes to play a central role in the play named after he) and Ismene. In an extremely moving final moment with his children (who, he reminds himself, are also his siblings), Oedipus hears them and asks to hold their hands for the last time. He tells them they will have difficult lives and will be punished by men for sins they did not commit; for this reason he implores Thebes to pity them. He asks Creon again to exile him, and in his last speech he expresses regret at having to depart from his beloved children. The Chorus ends the play by using Oedipus’s story to illustrate the famous moral that one should not judge a man’s life until it is over.