Dramatic Irony In Oedipus Rex Essay

In the golden age of Athens, Greek theater was exploding. It was a flourishing time for the arts in Greece. One greek playwright, Sophocles, was a mastermind at creating stories of tragedy. Sophocles’ masterpiece, Oedipus Rex, has not lasted for so long by slipping through the cracks. Sophocles uses his technique of implanting literary devices in his writing to pave this play’s road to fame. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles combines an atrocious plot, a sad setting, and suspense created with dramatic irony to build a story that has readers on the edge of their seats at every turn.
Sophocles uses a plot centered around taboo acts to engender interest and horror in the reader. Oedipus finds himself not knowing who his real parents are and wishing to discover more of his true identity after one night when the servant told …show more content…
Oedipus is looking for himself all along and he doesn’t realize it. When Oedipus is speaking about how he wants to extinguish the plague from the land he says, “The grief I feel for these citizens is even greater than any pain I feel for my own life” (Oedipus Rex 109-111). The audience can see that he should be the one feeling grief for his own life because his life is what caused all of this and he cannot, creating dramatic irony. Oedipus promises to fix the land and find whoever killed Laius when he says, “This polluting stain I will remove, not for some distant friends, but for myself. For whoever killed this man may soon enough desire to turn his hand to punish me in the same way, as well” (Oedipus Rex 165-169) Oedipus was talking about himself, but he did not know. Also, he was right when he said, “For whoever killed this man may soon enough desire to turn his hand to punish me in the same way, as well” because he blinded himself when he found out the truth. Dramatic irony completes this play and without it, Oedipus Rex would not be as suspenseful and crazy as it

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