Oedipus Rex Review
My Rating: 5 Stars
Date Finished: 11 January 2015
Synopsis:
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex has never been surpassed for the raw and terrible power with which its hero struggles to answer the eternal question, "Who am I?" The play, a story of a king who acting entirely in ignorance kills his father and marries his mother, unfolds with shattering power; we are helplessly carried along with Oedipus towards the final, horrific truth.
To make Oedipus more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. We hope that the reader may, through this edition, more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama.
My Review:
"...what man wins more happiness than just its shape and the ruin when that shape collapses?"
In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the title character deals with his own journey of finding his identity and
dealing with the consequences of what he finds. Throughout the play, the audience sees Oedipus fighting between self-identity and identifying himself in the group of the city he rules. This battle leads to his own fall from grace when he finds out his fate has come true. In the beginning of the play, during his second speech to the city, Oedipus sees his people suffering and takes that suffering as his own. He trades his self-identity for an identity of a larger group so he can, as he believes, rule his people better. Because he wants to be a better ruler, he very much depends on what his people think of him as well. This play is first and foremost about identity of the self, but there are also deeper levels of identity for the characters.I absolutely love this play. I had to read this for one of my college classes, and rereading it for the second time just makes me love it even more. The drama makes everything kind of funny in a way. So what happened to the characters is not funny the way that Tiresias is able to predict everything that will happen makes everything funny after that point. if you haven't read this play, do it. It is great.
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