Two Tragedies of Sophocles (Masterpieces of Foreign Literature Series)

The oracle of Apollo is a judgment written in advance. The prophecy indicates that Oedipus will eventually kill his father and marry his mother. The biological father, who was afraid of fate, cruelly abandoned his newborn child in the wilderness, trying to cut off the possibility of fate. But fate is never lucky, and Oedipus, who was adopted and raised, heard this terrible prophecy again. In order to escape the curse, he resolutely fled the homeland he knew, left the country of his adoptive parents, and rushed to a new life. But the cruelest thing about fate is not the sudden disaster, but the fact that you try your best to escape from the abyss, but you move towards your fate accurately step by step. On the way to exile, he accidentally encountered his biological father, whom he had never met before. A dispute and a mistake caused him to commit the sin of patricide. Then he stepped into the city-state of Thebes, solved the mystery of the Sphinx, was crowned king in the name of a wise man, and married the widowed queen, the biological mother he had never met. From then on, they entered into a marriage, gave birth to children, and had a pair of children. The absurd closed loop of unknown destiny has been completed. Many years later, the plague swept through the entire city-state, causing mourning and loss of life. The oracle comes again: the grievances of the old kings are still in peace, and the regicide sinners are stranded in the city-state, polluting the world and causing disasters. When people look back on the entire tragedy, they always attribute the sin to Oedipus, but if we take a closer look at the whole process: he never had any evil thoughts, no subjective malice, no deliberate transgression. He never wanted to kill his father and avoided it all his life; He never wanted to marry his mother, he was completely ignorant. He has been fighting prophecies all his life, trying to escape his destiny, but he is trapped step by step by the trajectory preset by the gods, and falls into an eternal tragedy. The pain of Oedipus is never the sinking of desire, but the absolute powerlessness, absolute insignificance, and absolute inability of mortals in the face of the determined destiny. The well-known "Oedipus complex", which uses Oedipus desire to define this tragedy, in my opinion, is the deepest dissolution and distortion of this unprecedented tragedy. If Oedipus had known that the queen was his biological mother, he would never have come even half a step closer, let alone even the slightest chance of violating the rules. All his sins were born of ignorance and the tricks of fate. At the moment when he cut out his sight with his own hands, exchanged endless darkness for clarity, and walked towards the place of exile, his body was trapped in the endless night, but his soul broke away from the net woven by the oracle, and truly had a bright and open road ahead.

I think this book is very good! The plot of "Oedipus the King" is so exciting, especially the part where Oedipus discovers that he accidentally killed his father and married his mother, which made me deeply feel the impermanence of fate. Moreover, the characters in the book are very vivid. I admire Oedipus's bravery and determination, and Antigone's persistence and loyalty. All in all, this is a book worth reading and highly recommended!

Oedipus Rex is one of my favorite plays [laughs] The scene at the end where Oedipus reacts to a foreboding of his terrible fate is so relatable that I'll be watching other versions. This is not my favorite version