Question : Essay-type
Critically discuss the use of irony in ‘Oedipus Rex’.
Introduction
Mr Hudson regards ‘Oedipus Rex’ as one of the world’s master pieces of sustained irony. Sophocles has dexterously used this device in most of his tragedies. Tragic irony is the name given to a device used originally in ancient Greek tragedies, and later in all tragedies whereby a character’s words and actions are seen to be wholly contradictory to the actual situation as known to some of the other characters or to the audience. Irony consists essentially in the contrast of the two aspects of the same remark or situation.
Irony In Oedipus Rex
It is rightly said that ‘Oedipus Rex’ piles irony upon. In fact every speech and situation is fraught with irony. Sometimes a character acts in such a way which is unexpected from him in his situation. Sometimes he expects the opposite of what destiny holds in store for him. Sometimes he says something which anticipates the actual outcome in a way that is unexpected to him. Sometimes there is a marked contrast between what the characters understand about their acts and what the play demonstrates about them.
Irony In Different Scenes
The very proclamation to Oedipus, for instance, that he will make a determined effort to trace the murder of Lauis and the curse that Oedipus utters upon the killer and upon those sheltering the criminal, possess a tragic irony in view of the audience knowledge that Oedipus himself will ultimately prove to be Laius’s murderer.
The scene between Oedipus and the prophet Tiresias is fraught with tragic irony throughout. The prophet knows everything, while Oedipus is a guilty man who does not know himself as such. Tiresias would not like to disclose the secret that he knows. But the king misinterprets it as the prophet’s villainy. Being provoked, he convicts Oedipus as the sinner. The king flies into terrible rage and hurts contempt on the prophet’s blindness–
“But what is truth to thee,
Whose eyes, and ears, and brain are darkened all.”
The tragic fact is that Oedipus is exactly what he condemns Tiresias to be. The prophet says, “To twit me with my blindness—thou hast eyes, Yet see’st not in what misery thou art fallen,” There is also irony in the contrast between what Oedipus truly is and what he at this moment thinks himself to be.
Tragic irony is also to be found in the scene with Creon. Creon begs Oedipus not to think him a traitor and to pass the sentence of death or banishment against him. But Oedipus, blinded by his authority and anger, shows himself relentless. This situation is ironical when viewed in the light of the final scene in which it is Oedipus who becomes the suppliant, and Creon who is the king. In the final scene the roles are reversed.
Then there is the scene with Jocasta. Here both Oedipus and Jocasta appear as persons ignorant of the true facts. The accusations of Tiresias have deeply disturbed the mind of Oedipus. Jocasta tries to soothe her husband’s feelings by saying that no man possesses the secret of divination.
There is irony also in the account of his life which Oedipus gives to Jocasta. Oedipus thinks himself to be the son of Polybus and Merope; he fled from Corinth after the Oracle had told him of the crimes he would commit. But all the time Oedipus has been unknowingly performing certain actions leading to the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Oracle.
Jocasta gets another opportunity to mock at the Oracles when the Corinthian messenger arrives with the news of Polybus’s death. “Where are you now, divine prognostications?”, she asks without realizing that her mockery will turn against herself. The messenger, who wanted to free Oedipus of his fear of marrying his mother, ends by revealing unknowingly the fact that Jocasta’s husband Oedipus is really her son.
Before Jocasta’s suicide the song of the Chorus is full of tragic irony. The Chorus visualizes Oedipus as the offspring of a union between some God and a mountain nymph. There is a big contrast between the Chorus’s tribute to Oedipus with the divine parentage and the actual reality.
After the discovery there is hardly any room for tragic irony, and accordingly, the concluding part of the play contains little or no tragic irony.
We should remember that there is a larger irony in the inversion of the whole action. The homeless wanderer by delivering the city of Thebes from the Sphinx, and marrying Jocasta, became a king. But at last, once again he becomes homeless wanderer after the revelation of the truth about the murder.
Conclusion
So we may conclude with remarkably a special skill of Sophocles that he has managed to produce so much irony as well as to maintain perfect suspense, in a play, the plot of which is so well-known.
Related Question
Examine Oedipus Rex as a tissue of Sophoclean irony.
