Studied by 18 people
Looks like no one added any tags here yet for you.
I grieve for you, my children. Believe me, I know
All that you desire of me, all that you suffer;
And while you suffer, none suffers more than I.
You have your several griefs, each for himself;
But my heart bears the weight of my own, and yours
And all my people’s sorrows. I am not asleep. (27)
Speaker: Oedipus
Audience: Priest / beggars
Significance: tragic hero (virtuous but not just)
There is an unclean thing,
Born and nursed on our soil, polluting our soil,
Which must be driven away, not kept to destroy us. (28)
Speaker: creon
Audience: Oedipus and priest / beggars
Significance: dramatic irony (directly after they say killer of laius needs to be found, Oedipus looking for himself)
You will find me as willing an ally as you could wish
In the cause of God and our country.
The killer of Laius,
Whoever he was, might think to turn his hand
Against me; thus, serving Laius, I serve myself. (29)
Speaker: oedipus
Audience: Creon / beggars
Significance: tragic hero (virtuous) / dramatic irony
**I tell you I do believe you had a hand
In plotting, and all but doing, this very act.
If you had eyes to see with, I would have said
Your hand, and yours alone, had done it all. (34)
Speaker: oedipus
Audience: teiresias
Significance: tragic hero (flaw) / external conflict
What was your vaunted seercraft ever worth?
And where were you, when the Dog-faced Witch was here?
Had you any word of deliverance then for our people?
There was a riddle too deep for common wits;
A seer should have answered it, but answer came there none
From you; bird-lore and god-craft all were silent. Until I came -
I, ignorant Oedipus, came -
And stopped the riddler’s mouth, guessing the truth
By mother-wit, not bird-lore. (36-37)
Speaker: oedipus
Audience: teiresias
Significance: tragic hero (pride making him feel better than teiresias) / external conflict
A swift and two-edged sword,
You mother’s and your father’s curse, shall sweep you
Out of this land. Those now clear-seeing eyes
Shall then be darkened, then no place be deaf,
No corner of Cithaeron echoless,
To your loud crying, when you learn the truth
Of that sweet marriage-song that hailed you home
To the fair-seeming haven of your hopes –
With more, more misery than you can guess,
To show you what you are, and who they are
That call you father. (37)
Speaker: teiresias
Audience: oedipus
Significance: foreshadowing / theme
The killer of Laius – that man is here;
Passing for an alien, a sojourner here among us;
But, as presently shall appear, a Theban born,
To his cost. He that came seeing, blind shall he go;
Rich now, then a beggar; stick-in-hand, groping his way/To a
land of exile; brother, as it shall be shown,
And father at once, to the children he cherishes; son,
And husband, to the woman who bore him; father-killer,/And
father-supplanter./Go in, and think on this./When you can
prove me wrong, then call me blind. (38)
Speaker: teiresias
Audience: oedipus
Significance: foreshadowing / external conflict
Citizens! They tell me that King Oedipus
Has laid a slanderous accusation on me.
I will not bear it! If he thinks that I
Have done him any harm, by word or act,
In this calamitous hour, I will not live -
Life is too long a time - to hear such scandal!
Nay, more than scandal, a grievous imputation,
If you, my friends, my country, call me traitor. (40)
Speaker: creon
Audience: chorus
Significance: internal conflict / external conflict (rumors and creon being oedipus subject)
Well, sir? What brings you here?
Have you the face to stand before my door,
Proved plotter against my life, thief of my crown?
Do you take me for a coward, or a fool?
Did you suppose I wanted eye to see
The plot preparing, wits to counter it?
And what a foolish plot! You, without backing
Of friends or puRse, to go in quest of kingship!
Kingdoms are won by men and moneybags. (40)
Speaker: oedipus
Audience: creon
Significance: tragic hero (flaw - pride/stubborn) / external conflict
**Then absolve yourself at once. For I can tell you,
No man possesses the secret of divination.
And I have proof. An oracle was given to Laius –
From Phoebus, no; but his ministers –
That he should die by the hands of his own child,
His child and mine. What came of it? Laius,
It is common knowledge, was killed by outland robbers/At a
place where three roads meet. (45)
Speaker: Jocasta
Audience: Oedipus
Significance: Dramatic irony / situational irony
Is this my sin? Am I not utterly foul?
Banished from here, and in my banishment
Debarred from home and from my fatherland,
Which I must shun forever, lest I live
To make my mother my wife, and kill my father …
My father … Polybus to whom I owe my life. (48)
Speaker: Oedipus
Audience: Jocasta
Significance: Internal conflict / dramatic irony
He cannot go back on it now – the whole town heard it.
Not only I. And even if he changes his story
In some small point, he cannot in any event
Pretend that Laius died as was foretold.
For Loxias said a child of mine should kill him.
It was not to be; poor child, it was he that died.
A fig for divination! (49)
Speaker: Jocasta
Audience: Oedipus
Significance: dramatic irony
Who walks his own high-handed way, disdaining
True righteousness and holy ornament;
Who falsely wins, all sacred things profaning;
Shall escape his doomed pride’s punishment? (50)
Speaker: Chorus
Audience: reader
Significance: Tragic hero (flaw) / theme
Where are you now, divine prognostications!
The man whom Oedipus has avoided all these years,
Lest he should kill him – dead! By a natural death,
And by no act of his! (51)
Speaker: Jocasta
Audience: audience/reader
Significance: Dramatic irony
I am the child of Fortune,
The giver of good, and I shall not be shamed.
She is my mother; my sisters are the Seasons;
My rising and falling march with theirs.
Born thus, I ask to be no other man
Than that I am, and will know who I am. (55)
Speaker: Oedipus
Audience: Chorus
Significance: dramatic irony / theme
Alas! All out! All known, no more concealment!
O Light! May I never look on you again,
Revealed as I am, sinful in my begetting,
Sinful in marriage, sinful in shedding of blood! (58)
Speaker: Oedipus
Audience: Sheppard 1
Significance: Tragic hero (destruction) / internal conflict (shame)
O you most honourable lords of the city of Thebes,
Weep for the things you shall hear, the things you must see,
If you are true sons and loyal to the house of Labdacus. Not all
the waters of Ister, the waters of Phasis,
Can wash this dwelling clean of the foulness within,
Clean of the deliberate acts that soon shall be known,
Of all horrible acts, most horrible, wilfully chosen. (59)
Speaker: attendant
Audience: chorus
Significance: tragic hero (death and destruction) / foreshadowing
He pierced his eyeballs time and time again,
Till bloody tears ran down his beard – not drops
But in full spate a whole cascade descending
In drenching cataracts of scarlet rain. (61)
Speaker: Attendant
Audience: Chorus
Significance: tragic hero (downfall) / visual imagery
Ah! Horror beyond all bearing!
Foulest disfigurement
That ever I saw! O cruel,
Insensate agony!
What demon of destiny
With swift assault outstriding
Has ridden you down? (61-62)
Speaker: chorus
Audience: Oedipus
Significance: theme / tragic hero (downfall)
I will not believe that this was not the best
That could have been done. Teach me no other lesson.
How could I meet my father beyond the grave
With seeing eyes; or my unhappy mother,
Against whom I have committed such heinous sin
As no mere death could pay for? Could I still love
To look at my children, begotten as they were begotten? (63-
64)
Speaker: Oedipus
Audience: chorus
Significance: tragic hero (knowledge through suffering/downfall) / internal conflict
Oedipus, I am not here to scott at your fall,
Nor yet to reproach you for your past misdeeds.
My friends, remember your respect for the Lord of Life,
The Sun above us - if not for the children of men.
The unclean must not remain in the eye of day;
Nor earth not air nor water may receive it.
Take him within; piety at least demands
That none but kinsmen should hear and see such suffering.
(65)
Speaker: creon
Audience: oedipus
Significance: Tragic hero (downfall) / external conflict
Where are you, children?
Come, feel your brother’s hands. It was their work
That darkened these clear eyes - your father’s eyes
As once you knew them, though he never saw
Nor knew what he did when he became your father.
They cannot see you; but they weep with you.
I think of your sorrowful life in the days to come,
When you must fae the world: the holy days,
High days and days of state, joyless for you,
Returning sadly home while others play. (66)
Speaker: oedipus
Audience: creon and daughters
Significance: internal conflict / tragic hero (downfall / knowledge through suffering)
As for me,
No longer let my living presence curse
This fatherland of mine, but let me go
And live upon the mountains – and die there.
Cithaeron! Name for ever linked with mine –
On Mount Cithaeron, which my parents chose
To be my deathbed, I will go and die
Obedient to their desires. (66)Sons and daughters of Thebes, behold; this was Oedipus,
Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries;
Was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity;
Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head.
Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending,
And none can be called happy until that day when he carries
His happiness down to the grave in peace. (68)
Speaker: oedipus
Audience: creon
Significance: tragic hero (downfall / knowledge through suffering) / situational irony
Sons and daughters of Thebes, behold; this was Oedipus,
Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries;
Was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity;
Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head.
Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending,
And none can be called happy until that day when he carries
His happiness down to the grave in peace. (68)
Speaker: chorus (ode)
Audience: reader
Significance: Tragic hero (all characteristics)
Note 
Flashcard (21)