Oedipus Rex!

1. Oedipus Rex!

3. Your own eyes must tell you: Thebes is tossed on a murdering sea and cannot lift her head from the death surge. A rust consumes the buds of the earth…Death alone battens upon the misery of Thebes.

4. Extended Metaphor

5. I who saw your days call no man blest—your great days like ghosts gone.

6. simile

7. Question 1 - 30 Creon: That above all I must dispute with you Oedipus: That above all I will not hear you deny.

8. Parallelism/Repetition

9. Poor children! You may be sure I know all that you longed in your coming here. I know that you are deathly sick; and yet, sick as you are, no one is as sick as I.

10. Verbal Irony

11. The Delphic stone of prophecies remembers ancient regicide and a still bloody hand.

12. Metonomy

13. Why should anyone in this world be afraid, since fate rules us and nothing can be foreseen? A man should live only for the present day.

14. Jocasta

15. No man can judge that rough unknown or trust in second sight, for wisdom changes hands among the wise.

16. Chorus

17. Listen to me; you mock my blindness do you? But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind. You cannot see the wretchedness of your life. • DAILY DOUBLE

18. Teiresias

19. I say I take the son’s part, just as though I were his son, to press the fight for him and see it won! • Daily Double

20. Oedipus

21. Think of this first: would any sane man prefer power, with all the king’s anxieties, to the same power of grace and sleep?

22. Creon

23. O Lord Apollo! May your news be as fair as your face radiant.

24. Invocation

25. The tyrant … who drinks from his great sickening cup recklessness and vanity, until from his high crest headlong he plummets to the dust of hope

26. Peripeteia

27. Oedipus—the simple man who knows nothing—I thought it out myself, no birds to help me!

28. Hubris

29. All the prophecies!—Now, O Light, may I look on you for the last time, I Oedipus, Oedipus damned in his birth, damned in his marriage!

30. Anagnorisis

31. Jocasta: Set your mind at rest, if it is a question of soothsayers, I tell you that you will find no man whose craft gives knowledge of the unknowable. Here is my proof… Oedipus: Just now while you were speaking: it chilled my heart.

32. Tragic Irony

33. The area where the Chorus filed in was called the ________?

34. parados

35. Name two functions of the Chorus

37. Name two functions of an actor’s mask.

39. According to Greek legend, who was the first actor?

40. Thespis

41. How many of Sophocles’ plays survive in their entirety?

42. Seven

43. Outline the state of Thebes at the beginning of the play. Cite two specific examples.

44. Affected by plague: death, sickness, famine.

45. Outline the parts of Oedipus’ proclamation to Thebes.

46. Murderer will be exiled • Accomplices will be ostracized • May not protect this person • Oedipus himself is not exempt

47. What motif does Sophocles use to discuss the paradox of truth in the play? Be specific.

48. Day/night • Darkness/light

49. Name Oedipus’ two daughters. Hypothesize why they are in the end of the play.

50. Antigone and Ismene • Relate to the trilogy of Greek tragedy • Enforce the theme of unforeseen influence in one’s actions.