A Life of Misery
Nick Vadala
College Writing II
Theater is one of the most beautiful and magnificent works of art a person can whiteness.
Although theater plays a small role in the society we live in today, it was not so back in the
fifth century B.C., when Athens was in its prime, a society ahead of its time. Back then,
theater was exceptionally popular, drawing up to 17,000 spectators a showing. Theaters
were built all over and were glorious works of art alone. Theater was more then what we
would consider going to see a movie or a sporting event; it was both a religious and civic
occasion. Greek plays were only shown twice a year at religious festivals. These plays had
deep meaning to them and portrayed an important myth or legendary event. One of the
greatest and most popular Greek plays written is “Oedipus the King”, written by
Sophocles. Although he never won a prize for the play, it has proven to be influential in
many ways.
Oedipus was born to the king and queen of Thebes, Laius and Jocasta. His parents were
contacted by an oracle who told them that their son would kill Laius and marry his mother.
Laius tied Oedipus’s feet together and gave it to a servant of the kind, the Sheppard, to kill.
The Sheppard took pity on the child and gave him to another Sheppard to bring up on his
own. This man gave the child to King Polybus and queen Merope of Corinth. Oedipus
knows none of this and he thinks these two are his true parents. When a drunken man told
him that they are not his parents, he went to Delphi to seek the truth. Apollo refused to
reveal the answer to what he was seeking. However, he did tell him that it was his fate to
make love with his own mother and shed his own father’s blood, he fled from Corinth. He
ran towards a place where he would never see his parents again, so he couldn’t harm them.
In his travels he came across a group of men who brutally forced him off the road. In anger
he killed the man who pushed him off the road. When the older man hit him with two
prongs, he killed him and the rest. As he came along in his journey he came to Thebes and
