Oedipus the King - Key Quotations, Critical Quotations and Facts

Oedipus’ first line

‘Oh my children’

Early action and line which show his piety and quasi-democratic tendencies

Helping a Priest to his feet, ‘you should speak for the others’

A line which implies that Oedipus does not observe the Delphic maxim ‘nothing in excess’

‘I’ll do anything’

What proportion of the questions does Oedipus ask across the play?

183 of 298

First instance of dramatic irony (eye-rony)

‘I would be blind to misery not to pity my people’

2 titles the Priest awards Oedipus which sets up the peripeteia (dramatic reversal) he will undergo

‘our greatest power’, ‘first of men’

Nautical metaphor which shows how awful the situation is in Thebes (these would have resonated with the naval Athenian audience)

‘our ship pitches wildly’

Raw as hell line which conveys that Thebes is f-ing dying

‘black Death luxuriates in the raw, wailing miseries of Thebes’

His subjects aren’t encouraging him to be hubristic

‘You cannot equal the gods’

Line in his second speech hinting at Oedipus being polluted

‘not one is sick as I’

Aristotle’s Unity of Time

‘Today’s the day’

Oedipus’ second speech line which characterises him as pious and patriotic: he’d be a (?) not to do ‘all the god makes clear’

‘traitor’

Dramatic foreshadowing of Creon becoming king

‘he’s crowned’

Oedipus being democratic which would have endeared him to the Athenian audience

‘speak to us all’

Apollo’s 2 commands which foreshadow Oedipus’ exile and his children being polluted (the engue)

‘Drive the corruption from the land’, ‘don’t nurse it in your soil’

Legalistic line from Oedipus that would have endeared him to the audience of the polis that invented democracy

‘Someone to cross-examine?’

Oedipus’ excessive declaration that he will find the killer of Laius

‘I’ll bring it all to light myself!’

What type of prayer is the parodos?

Kletic hymn

How many gods are invoked in the parodos?

Five

Gods invoked in the parodos

Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Artemis, Dionysus

Line supporting the theory that Sophocles used OTK to scare the audience into piety

(‘Terrible myths call men to the worship of the gods.’ - Elektra, Euripides’)

‘I worship you in dread.’

2 quotes in the parodos that make Thebes’ suffering explicit

‘miseries numberless’, ‘grief on grief’

Horrifying image of bodies not receiving proper burial rites (an atrocious idea to the Athenians)

‘generations strewn on the ground’

Yonic image of Jocasta’s vagina

NB: ‘him’ = the god of death

‘blast him out to the Sea-queen’s chamber’

Oedipus’ most hubristic line which would have made the Athenians want him dead

‘You pray to the gods? Let me grant your prayers.’

The punishment Oedipus offers the killer of Laius if he comes forward

‘exile, totally unharmed’

Oedipus’ curse on the murderer

‘let that man drag out his life in agony’

Perhaps the most ironic line about the relationship between Oedipus and Laius

‘I will fight for him as if he were my father’

Inviting insight from others - Chorus leader offers to mention ‘the next best thing’ and Oedipus tells him to say

‘The third best too’

Oedipus’ first insult to Tiresias when he refuses to reveal what he knows

‘scum of the earth’

Tiresias on Fate

‘What will come will come.’

Tiresias plainly revealing Oedipus murdered Laius

‘you are the murderer you hunt’

Tiresias plainly revealing Oedipus slept with Jocasta and produced four polluted children with her

‘you and your loved ones live together in infamy’

Oedipus (eye-ronically) mocks Tiresias for his

‘eyes blind as stone’

Hugely impious line Oedipus says to Tiresias

‘your gods - nothing’

Aristotle’s Unity of Time pt2

‘This day will bring your birth and your destruction’

Tiresias foreshadowing the upcoming peripeteia

‘beggar who now is rich’

Tiresias’ line about the incest (links to the Athenian engue)

‘he sowed the loins his father sowed’

Line in the second choral speech which evokes Aristotle’s beloved fear and pity

‘shatters me with terror’

2 lines in the second choral song which prove the Thebans love him

‘the joy of Thebes’, ‘never will I convict my king’

After Tiresias gives Oedipus the terrible truth, he believes Creon is

‘scheming to steal my crown and power’

Creon using legalistic terminology in his second speech

‘judge me on the facts’

Thebes is a triumvirate

‘all of us are equals’

Creon not desiring kingship - ‘I’m not the man to yearn for kingship’ because he’d have to perform

‘painful duties’

Oedipus discharging his ‘aggressive impulses’ (Faber) against Creon

‘I want you dead’

Exchange between Oedipus and Creon showing a power struggle over Thebes

‘my city’, ‘my city too’

Jocasta sounding like a mother to Oedipus in her first appearance

‘Into the palace now’

Line by Creon which most explicitly foreshadows the incest discovery

‘My sister, it’s dreadful…Oedipus your husband’

Jocasta and the Chorus urging Oedipus to believe the oath Creon swears

‘honour the solemn oath’, ‘give way, my king’

Oedipus being democratic by relenting to the will of Jocasta and the Chorus

‘your words move me’

What does Creon having the second highest number of lines symbolise?

He is next in line for the throne

How Jocasta describes Oedipus’ stuborness

‘so unbending’

First line suggesting Oedipus and Jocasta share a loving relationship

‘I respect you, Jocasta, much more than these men here’

3s are important to OTK. Oedipus receives 3 prophecies, suffers 3 exiles and murdered Laius

‘at a place where three roads meet’

Cleaning metaphor which shows Jocasta to be a good wife

‘Brush them from your mind’

(Apollo) ‘flashed before my eyes …

‘a future great with pain, terror, disaster’

‘you will bring a breed of children into the light …

‘no man can bear to see’

Description of Oedipus’ self imposed exile which evokes pathos for him

‘running, always running’

Metatheatrical line which draws attention to the fact that OTK was written for and staged at the City Dionysia play competition

‘what man alive more miserable than I?’

Jocasta stripping herself of blame for being complicit in the murder of baby Oedipus

‘They destroyed him first.’

Jocasta being impious in a way which foreshadows her suicide

‘So much for prophecy (…) From this day on, I wouldn’t look right or left.’

Quote linking to Athens’ hatred of kings and the Greek title of the play (Oedipus Tyrannus)

‘Pride breeds the tyrant.’

In her final episode, Jocasta says that the prophecies have changed Oedipus; he is

‘no longer a man of sense’

How the messenger announces Polybus’ death

‘Death has got him in the tomb’

Oedipus (extremely impiously) says the prophecies are

‘nothing, worthless’

Domestic labour metaphor which characterises Jocasta as a good wife/woman

‘sweep it from your mind forever’

Jocasta’s impious disregard of Fate

‘chance rules our lives’

The biggest revelation of the play

‘Polybus was nothing to you’

Laius and Jocasta had baby Oedipus abandoned

‘down the woody flanks of Mount Cithaeron’

Jocasta’s final line

‘man of agony - that is the only name I have for you’

Oedipus’ threat of torture to the shepherd; resembling the ‘bully boy tyrant’ (Kitto) Aegisthus

‘you need lashing more than he does’

Oedipus seeking out knowledge ‘beyond the scope of what is prudent or necessary’ (Waggoner)

‘I’m at the edge of hearing horrors, yes, but I must hear!’

Sophocles’ most metatheatrical line alluding to the fact that Oedipus’ story was crafted to be as tragic as possible to win a competition

‘you were born for pain’

Quote proving the gods led Oedipus to find Jocasta ‘hanging by the neck’

‘one of the dark powers pointing the way’

Oedipus blinds himself with Jocasta’s

‘brooches’

The Greeks believing pollution comes in through the eyes

‘I pity you but I can’t bear to look’

The Chorus (for once) not being the voice of moderation

‘Better to die than be alive and blind’

Height of pathos; when Creon demands Oedipus ‘let go of the children’, he begs

‘don’t take them away’

Final nautical metaphor from the Chorus discussing how Oedipus’ life has been ruined

‘a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him’