Plot: Oedipus Rex

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Plot of Oedipus Rex: Conflict, Climax, and Resolution Oedipus the King or Oedipus Rex is one of the greatest plays of Sophocles. Oedipus is the main character and the king of Thebes. As a child he was given to a shepherd to be killed, because of the fate was waiting for him in the future. The play develops in three parts, that represents the theme of person’s traits from peak to downfall, conflict and resolution after climax of the play. The main conflict of the play starts with the plague that Oedipus has to void in order to save the people of Thebes. Everything was good after he solved Sphinx’s riddle and became a king. To find the answer to a terrible plague that started to destroy the city, he sends a messenger to oracle. The answer received was to find and punish the killer of Laius, a former king of Thebes. He was told that the only man who escaped from the group of robbers, who attacked the king, is in the city. But no one can recognize him. Desperate with finding the killer Oedipus struggles to get Tiresias, a prophecy, to find the answer. After a long refrains from divulging the truth to Oedipus, Tiresias gives the answer to find the killer of Laius. He says that the man who killed the former king of Thebes is among them, it is a blind who could see before, a beggar who was rich, he is brother to his own children, son and husband to a woman who bore him, and son and killer to his father. The climax is the point when Oedipus knows the truth, that he is the murder of the King Laius and his father, and married his own mother, Queen Jocasta. For this fatal answer of Tiresias, Oedipus starts blaming Creon that he is the one who brought Tiresias. Now as he announced in the beginning that the killer will be punished and banished from the kingdom, he must do it. Oedipus blinds himself as a punishment and Jocasta hangs herself, after telling the truth that

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