The Catharsis of Oedipus the King

            A catharsis is a Greek word for a purification of emotions.  Aristotle was the one who stated that a good tragedy would contain a catharsis and he used the Oedipus Trilogies by Sophocles as the perfect example.  Oedipus the King is a tragic story of how a king is destroyed and comes to a horrible catharsis.

            Oedipus is the King of Thebes finds out that a prophecy that had caused his parents to have him killed has come true.  It was prophesied that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother.  After surviving the murder, he was adopted and raised in royalty as he would have if his parents had kept him.  After he is grown, he finds out about the adoption and when he leaves his country and on a crossroads, he meets a group of men that he mistakes for thieves.  He kills a man, unaware that it was his biological father.  He then arrives in Thebes and after rescuing the city from evil, he marries the queen.  Unknown to Oedipus, the queen, Jocasta, is his birth mother.

            By the end of the play, the truth is revealed to all of the characters.  This is where the catharsis takes place.  Jocasta is so disgusted that she has married her son and bore his children that she hangs herself.  Oedipus is delivered the news that Jocasta is dead.  On viewing her body, he grabs her pins and jabs out his eyes.  The physical pain he must have endured would have to have been almost unbearable, but then the pain of knowing one married and impregnated one’s mother and murdered one’s father would have to be an unbearable pain.

            Oedipus then cries that he is not worthy to be king of Thebes, and he pleads with his brother-in-law, Creon to take his throne.  Creon is envious of the throne and is more than willing to accept the offer.  The only thing that Oedipus requests is that he take care of his unmarried daughters. Oedipus begs to be exiled and as he leaves, he declares that his fate is worse than death.

            Even though the audience knows that Oedipus had no knowledge of what he was doing at the time, most would agree that the punishment that he brings on himself in the end is horrific enough to pay for his crime.  It leaves the audience with the feeling of pity yet the protagonist has been purged.  Therefore, Aristotle was correct in the fact that he felt that Oedipus the King was such a good example of a catharsis.

Works Cited

Sophocles, E.A. Oedipus the King. Filiquarian Publishers LCC. 2006.