Irony In Sophocles Oedipus The King

Irony is a fundamental part of Greek tragedies. This irony is created when the audience knows something that the characters in the play do not. As a result, the audience feels more engaged with the story, creating feelings of suspense and foreshadowing later events. In the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Sophocles’ use of irony does just that. He uses three different types of irony, dramatic, verbal, and situational, in telling the story of the journey of Oedipus.
Dramatic irony is a form of irony in which the audience’s understanding of the events in the story surpass that of the characters. There are many examples of dramatic ironies that span the entire story. For example, the audience knows the true identity of Oedipus’ parents, that Oedipus
In Oedipus’ speech about finding the killer of Laïos, he wishes that the killer’s “life be consumed in evil and wretchedness.” (14) The irony is that Oedipus is the one who murdered Laïos, which means that Oedipus is condemning himself and indirectly laying out his own tragic fate. When Iocastê explains how her husband, Laïos, passed, Oedipus recalls a story from his past, in which “There were three highways…a chariot…with a man such as you describe…Forced me off the road…I struck him in my rage…I killed him.” (43) explanation. When the messenger from Corinth comes to Thebes to tell Oedipus the news that his “father,” Polybos, has died, Oedipus revealed that the reason he moved away from Corinth was because it was prophesied that he “was the man / Who should marry his own mother, shed his father’s blood / With his own hands.” (52) Oedipus was sad that Polybus died but was relieved that the prophecy was not fulfilled. However, what Oedipus doesn’t know is that he was the adopted son of Polybos, making him not his real father. What is ironic is that in trying to escape the prophecy, Oedipus moved away from his adoptive parents back to his real parents, where he then fulfilled the