قصة الكتاب :
\"Oedipus the King\" is the second in order of Sophocles\' trilogy that includes \"Antigone\" and \"Oedipus at Colonus\". \"Oedipus the King\" informs what is known in psychoanalysis as \"Oedipus complex\". Along with issues such as \"father killing\" and human relations, it touches upon protagonist\'s tragedy, in the Aristotelian sense, where the individual tumbles down form a distinctive status into a degrading situation due to a fundamental defect in his early life.
The plot revolves around Oedipus and his story where, inadvertently, he kills his own father, marries his mother and gives birth to four children. When his deeds are revealed to him later on, Oedipus plunges his eyes with pins, abdicates his throne, and goes astray.
The plot begins with an oracle telling king Laius, king of Thebes, that he would give birth to a boy who will latter kill his father and wed his mother. The king, trying to avoid this fate, decides to abandon his wife. However, he mates with her once when he was drunk and she gets pregnant. When the baby is born, the king orders to bind his feet with a pin, and throw him in the wilderness. The servant assigned with this mission feels sympathy towards the baby, and he hands him to a shepherd. The shepherd gives the baby to the king and queen of Corinth who raised him as a royal son and gave him the name Oedipus which means \"swollen feet\". Another oracle tells Oedipus that he would kill his own father and mate with his own mother. To avoid this, Oedipus leaves Corinth. On the road to Thebes Oedipus fights with and kills an old man and his guards before he proceeds to Thebes. Thebes was witched by the Sphinx, a woman with the body of a lion and wings of an eagle, who terrorized Thebes and killed everyone who fails to answer its riddles. Oedipus manages to solve the Sphinx\'s riddle, sending the creature to death. The people of Thebes are delighted for getting rid of the Sphinx, and they wed Oedipus to their widowed queen with whom he would give birth to four children.
The kingdom of Thebes is afflicted by plague, and havoc prevails. Oedipus inquires about the causes of the distress only to be told by an oracle that he wedded his mother, and revealed to him that the old man he killed on the road was his own father. Upon hearing this Oedipus is outraged. Digging for truths, Oedipus questions many people including a messenger from the Kingdom of Corinth. It is revealed that Oedipus\'s real parents are Jocasta and Laius of Thebe. Hearing that she wedded her own son, Jocasta hangs herself in her bedroom and Oedipus takes her gold pins that held her dress together and plunges them into his eyes so\" they should see no more the ills he suffered or had done\". Oedipus abdicates his throne and lives in exile.