I love the Oedipus Trilogy. Oedipus’s story is super tragic and brings up the topic of fate so hard. If a person is fated to do something, can he really be blamed when it happens? And what if the thing that happened wasn’t his fault to begin with?
Oedipus the King shows Oedipus as a king, living it up. But, he gets curious, and starts looking into the murder of the king before him. When he finds the truth, (SPOILER
he killed his Dad,defeated the sphinx, and married his Mom to become King and had four kids with her. This was all fated to happen before he was born, so when he was born, his parents stuck a pin through his feet and left him to die on a mountain. He got adopted by another king and queen. He left home, killed his Dad, etc.
END SPOILER), his wife commits suicide and he stabs his eyes with a pin from her dress, blinding himself. He is now disgraced, and eventually becomes a wanderer.
Oedipus at Colonus picks up with Oedipus as a wanderer. He comes across a City/State that he decides is going to be his death-place (Is death-place a thing? It is now!). He dies and curses his sons to kill each other on the battle field.
Antigone is about the culmination of the curse on the house of Oedipus. Oedipus’s sons had decided that they would share the crown when their father passed. One son would have power for a year, the other son would have it the next, and so on. However, the eldest decided after the first year that he didn’t want to give it up to his younger brother, so they started a war. When they both died, their uncle, Creon becomes king. He decides that one son is to be given a state burial and honors, the other is to be left as carrion for the birds. This is super impious, and will probably make Hades kinda mad. Antigone, one of Oedipus’s daughters, decides that Creon’s decision is bull, and buries her brother anyways. The rest of the play follows the fall out of Antigone’s choice.
All in all, I love these plays, especially Antigone. I got to watch Antigone performed at the University of North Georgia a while back and it was phenomenal.
Rating: 10/10, would read (and watch) again.
Beating Thomas Jefferson's Library 