How is the setting significant in 'Oedipus Rex'?

Answer 1

The setting of 'Oedipus Rex' is significant as the hometown and the crime scene of Theban King Oedipus. It also is significant as the location in which fateinexorably is carried out. And it therefore is significant too as a literary example of dramatic irony within a tragedy.

Oedipus doesn't know that Thebes is his birthplace. He is removed from his home when he's only three days old. The reason is a prophecy that his father, Theban King Laius, will be killed by his own son. His biological parents therefore intend for him to die instead. But through the help of two shepherds, Oedipus ultimately ends up in Corinth as the adoptive/foster son of King Polybus and Queen Merope.

As an adult, Oedipus hears a rumor that he isn't the biological son of his parents. He visits the Delphic Oracle for a second opinion. Instead, he receives the shocking news that he's fated to kill his own father and marry his own mother.

So Oedipus decides to flee from the Oracle and from Corinth. But the road meets two others, one of which leads ultimately to Thebes. At that crossroads, he is pulled into a street brawl by a churlish, surly stranger. Oedipus unknowingly kills in self defense his own father. Still ignorant of his true identity, he goes on to Thebes, which he saves from a murderous, tax crazy Sphinx. In gratitude, Thebans give him a job and a family by way of the vacant throne and the grieving widow that Laius leaves behind. The grieving widow is Theban Queen Jocasta, who is Oedipus' real mother.

Oedipus and Oedipus' parents think that a fate can be avoided. But their actions bring them to the very scene of their fates. Thebes indeed is the scene of all of the fated and committed crimes: the attempted murder of a child, the subsequent murder nearby of a king and a father, and the marriage of a mother to her own son. And so the play becomes the perfect, chilling example of the literary theme of fate, the literary technique of dramatic irony, and the literary form of the tragedy.