Analyzing how the situation irony and dramatic irony was used in the drama "Oedipus the King"

Introduction

Oedipus, the son of Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes, sent to be abandoned in the mountains because of the prophecy of him killing his father, the king, and marry his mother Jocasta. The sympathetic servant did not kill him and passed him on to a Sheppard, finally ending up in to the house of Polybus where the king and queen took him as their son. The information of Oedipus` adoption was given to him by a drunk. When he was not able to get any information from his parents, he found the Oracle who also did not tell him anything, but informed him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Trying to avoid this, he fled his home and went to Thebes (Dawe, R.D. Pp. 1).

When he came to Davila, he encountered a fork in the road where he encountered his birth father, King Laius, fighting on who had the right to pass, killing him in self defense, not knowing that the king was his real father. On the way to Thebes, he encountered Sphinx who had cursed all the travelers to the city, and killed all those who failed to answer her riddle. He was the first to answer her riddle, resulting in her taking her life, freeing the city. The people of the city were so glad that they took him as their king, offering their widowed queen as his. This was when he unknowingly married his mother, fulfilling the foretold prophesy (Dallas 1991, pp.55).

Oedipus

While ostensibly performing a gesture of acknowledging Oedipus's superiority, status, and power, what the suppliants are really doing is expressing the community's expectation that in this moment of crisis Oedipus will rise to the ...