Sophocles: Journal 5

How does Sophocles evoke fear and pity?

Sophocles evokes fear and pity by juxtaposing the chorus and Oedipus. He uses their parallel situations to highlight the ultimate downfall of the great and mighty Oedipus.

In the beggining of the play, Oedipus is very proud of his accomplishments and the people are happy to call him their king, "Oh Oedipus, king of the land, our greatest power!" (160, 16). In the play, the chorus starts out in a very bad position. The plague has hit their city and many people are dying. Sophocles places the chorus and Oedipus side by side to show how privileged Oedipus is compared to his people.

As the play continues, we see Oedipus sink lower and lower into the standings of the chorus. When he first realizes he may have killed Laius, we see a drop in his social standing, "What are you saying? I shudder to look at you" (202, 822). Jocasta, Oedipus' wife/mother, now shudders to look at him once he starts to hint that he might have killed Laius. Oedipus' tone is very panicky because of the fear that he might be the same murderer he is looking for. This evokes pity because we can see Oedipus' standing slowly dropping from this high and proud king to a hopeless common man like his people, the chorus. Sophocles evokes fear by making Oedipus' tone panicky, showing that he himself is scared of dropping to the ranks of the common man.

In the end of the play, Oedipus has become the very people he once ruled over. He is helpless, like his people are with the plague they suffer through. There is nothing that he can do to change his situation, except maybe kill himself like Jocasta has done. His rank literaly drops from a king to a common man. This evokes pity by showing how Oedipus is now one of the helpless people that we saw in the beginning of the play. Willing to do whatever they needed to help their situation even a little, like Oedipus did by gouging his eyes out. The chorus has spent almost all of thier pieces explaining what a bad position they are in and pleading with the gods to help them. Oedipus had been promising them that he would help, but now he has become the one who needs help, the plagued individual pleading for help from his, now, superiors.