II. The Introduction to Author and Oedipus the King

2.1 The Author Sophocles

Sophocles is the author of ancient Greek. He is one of the famous tragedy writers. In Hegel Aesthetic, “Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles are called the three great tragic poet of ancient Greece” (39). Sophocles showed the outstanding music talent when he was young. His father received a good education the early years and was good at music, sports, and dance, which influenced his childhood deeply and was elected to the juvenile reading team leader. Later he came into government circles, holding the post of many positions. His last activity led a juvenile to sing a dirge on his rival Euripides’ funeral. He also passed away at that year. He praised people’s free will, and encourage person to fight with the destiny.

He lived in the era of Athens’ slave owner democracy. The economic was very prosperous at that time. His plays reflected the ideologies of that era also. He embraced democracy, and advocated that every people should be equal and governed by the law society. But his religion was conservative. He claimed to protect the traditional religion. He was good at depicting characters. The character is distinct, and the language is concise and powerful.

He created lots of tragedy works. According to the encyclopedia soda dictionaries, he made 123 plays, but only 7 came down completely, among which Oedipus the King was the most well-known. He participated in the competition about tragedy when he was 27 years old, won the famous writer Aeschylus, and kept this honor twenty years more. He defeated 72-year-old Euripides, and among that time, there was almost no people beyond him. It is said, there is a man’s head bird which can sing a beautiful song statue on his tomb, and this is the great praise on his achievement about drama. All his life is calm and successful.

2.2 Oedipus the King

Sophocles made Aeschylus as model at first and came into his style soon. In order to stand out the conflicts of the characters in the play, he brought in the third actor. In his tragedy, dramatic dialogue and actions became more and more important than juvenile. The dialogue become the most important and as a powerful method to describe characters. He took many terrible scene into the play, such as, Ajax’ suicide in public, and Oedipus blind eyes.

Oedipus the King is the story as follows: The always prosperous city of Thebes suffered from misfortune suddenly, land was desolated, crops were hardly harvested, and women were aborted. People needed to be helped with endless pains and torments The king Oedipus became pretty worried. So, he sent somebody to please the oracle of Apollo. According to the oracle, the reason of that somebody killed the former king. Only the murder was found, could the city be saved. So the king Oedipus began to check out the murderer and brought to this tragedy. As the search going on, Oedipus found he was the murderer who killed his father, brought all of those terrible. What’s more, his queen was his mother, and then, the ashamed the queen committed suicide, Oedipus also can’t face of his children and his people. At last, he thorn his eyes with extreme shock, and left the city. “He lost his parents and children, lost the king and his people, lost his confidence and dignity, even the eyes” (Yang 14). What remained to him was the suffering.

Oedipus the King is Sophocles’ most powerful work. The Greek believe the destiny also reflect in the play, although the fate is can’t be fought.