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This 3 page paper discusses Sophocles' play "Oedipus the King," with particular regard to two examples of irony therein. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVIrnSop.rtf
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turns out to be Oedipus himself. This is possibly the most extreme example of irony possible to conceive: that a man should insist that a vicious criminal be found at
all costs, only to discover that he is that man. He is the agent of his own destruction. The situation is ironic, and so is the dialogue. Perhaps the most
important piece of situational irony is the fact that Oedipus left Corinth because he had heard the prophesy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, and felt
that by going away, he could avoid it. What he didnt know, of course, is that the people he was leaving were not his real mother and father, and it
was precisely because he tried to avoid his fate that he instead set it in motion. One comment about the play is general is that anything we find will always
relate back to the main issue, which is that Apollo told Oedipus to find the "infection" in the city. All the action, the irony, the horrific ending-they all stem from
the gods command. Thus the play can also be considered an example of the idea that there is fate at work which cannot be denied or thwarted, no matter how
hard we try to turn it aside. As far as ironic speeches, the play is full of them, but two that we can consider are at lines 59-61 and lines
138-141. Lines 59-61 read: "I know you are all sick, / yet there is not one of you, sick though you are, / that is as sick as I myself"
(Sophocles). In the first place, the people in Thebes are sick in the physical sense: there is a plague on the city and the citizens are dying; the crops are
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