Oedipus Rex Summary

Oedipus Rex is a play, not a chaptered book, performed as one continuous action in the classical Greek form:

Structure at a glance

• Prologue. Oedipus learns of the plague and vows to find Laius's killer
• Parodos and episodes. Confrontations with Tiresias, Creon, and Jocasta drive the investigation
• Choral odes (stasima). The Chorus of Theban elders reflects on fate, the gods, and hubris
• The recognition. A messenger and a shepherd reveal Oedipus's true origins
• The exodos. The catastrophe unfolds: Jocasta's death and Oedipus's self-blinding

Sophocles observes the classical unities, keeping the action in a single place over a single day, which heightens the play's relentless dramatic tension.

This summary of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles opens with the city of Thebes suffering under a devastating plague. The citizens beg their king, Oedipus, who once saved the city by solving the riddle of the Sphinx, to rescue them again. Oedipus has already sent his brother-in-law Creon to the oracle at Delphi, who returns with the god's command: the plague will end only when the murderer of the previous king, Laius, is found and driven out. Oedipus vows to uncover and punish the killer, unaware that he is cursing himself.

Oedipus summons the blind prophet Tiresias, who reluctantly, then angrily, declares that Oedipus himself is the polluter he seeks. Enraged and disbelieving, Oedipus accuses Tiresias and Creon of plotting against him. When Queen Jocasta, Oedipus's wife and Laius's widow, tries to calm him, she dismisses prophecy by recalling that Laius was supposedly killed by robbers where three roads meet, and that an oracle once foretold Laius would die by his own son's hand, a son they had left to die as an infant.

As told in this Oedipus Rex summary, Jocasta's story alarms Oedipus rather than comforting him: he remembers killing a man at a similar crossroads years before. He also recalls fleeing his supposed parents in Corinth after an oracle warned he would kill his father and marry his mother. A messenger arrives from Corinth announcing the death of King Polybus, seeming to disprove the prophecy, but then reveals that Oedipus was adopted, given as a baby to Polybus by a shepherd.

The truth closes in. That shepherd, summoned before Oedipus, is the very man who was ordered to expose the infant son of Laius and Jocasta on the mountainside but pitied him and gave him away. Piece by piece, Oedipus realizes the unbearable truth: he is that child. He killed Laius, his real father, at the crossroads, and he married Jocasta, his own mother, with whom he has had children. Everything the oracle foretold has come to pass, setting up the tragedy's devastating conclusion.

Oedipus Rex ends in catastrophe once the full truth is revealed. When Oedipus finally understands that he has killed his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, he rushes into the palace in anguish. There, a messenger reports, Jocasta, unable to bear the horror of what they have done, has hanged herself in her bedchamber.

Oedipus finds her body and, in a fit of grief and self-loathing, takes the long golden pins (brooches) from her robes and gouges out his own eyes, crying that he can no longer bear to look upon the world or the people he has wronged. Now blind, he emerges before the horrified Chorus, having become like the blind prophet Tiresias whose words he once mocked, seeing the truth only after losing his sight.

Oedipus begs Creon, who now assumes control of Thebes, to banish him from the city and to care for his young daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Broken and disgraced, he prepares to go into exile. The Chorus closes the play with a solemn reflection that no one should be considered happy until they have reached the end of their life free from pain. The conclusion of this summary of Oedipus Rex is a powerful meditation on fate and human limitation: even the wisest, most powerful man can be undone by forces beyond his control, and by his own relentless pursuit of the truth.

Here are some of the most famous quotes from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (in the classic Storr translation). These lines capture the play's themes of fate, blindness, and truth:

"Thou art the man, thou the accursed polluter of this land."

"I say thou art the murderer of the man whose murderer thou pursuest."

"No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought."

"Look ye, countrymen and Thebans, this is Oedipus the great, he who knew the Sphinx's riddle and was mightiest in our state."

"Therefore wait to see life's ending ere thou count one mortal blest; wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest."

These Oedipus Rex quotes are widely studied because they capture Sophocles' meditation on fate, the irony of sight and blindness, and the fragility of human happiness.