Moral Guilt, Poetic Justice, and Tragic Downfall in Oedipus Rex

Abstract

The universal fame of Oedipus Rex has not always been beneficial to its understanding. For centuries, this work was misinterpreted due to the attempt to attribute a moral fault to the protagonist of the Greek drama, King Oedipus, as a way to justify his misfortune, which becomes evident at the end of the play when he punishes himself by gouging out his eyes to isolate himself from the world. There is no doubt that, in the final part of the play, Oedipus fully feels guilt, and this guilt drives him to physical self-destruction. After all, discovering that he was the one who took his father’s life and that he shared his mother’s bed for years—fertilizing the very womb from which he himself was born—are reasons for experiencing profound guilt.

In this article, we will analyze aspects of the play that bring us closer to a thoughtful and philosophical interpretation. To achieve this, we will first turn to the text itself and, through contextual explanations and relevant quotations, delve into the meaning that the work conceals from imprecise analysis. We propose three sections that will serve as markers to separate and define the topics of analysis, while also constituting three different ways of approaching the play and its significance: the first and second sections provide an analysis and an attempt to refute two prejudices that have dominated interpretations of Oedipus Rex—moral guilt and poetic justice. Finally, the third section offers a reading of the role played by the gods in the play and, more generally, in Sophocles' thought, leading us to question how this perspective allows us to understand Oedipus' greatness, which is fundamentally a tragic and human greatness—that of the tragic hero.