Oedipus the King Oedipus the King is a great play whose qualities of inscrutability and of pervasive ironically quickly come to complicate any critical discussion(). Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King fits into a tragedy because it recounts the events in the life of Oedipus Rex, arouses pity and fear in the audience, and ends in an unhappy catastrophe (Harmon). Oedipus’ life began in Thebes as the son of Laius and Jocasta. Apollo had placed a curse on Oedipus. The cursed said that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. Since Laius and Jocasta were afraid of the curse, they sent Oedipus away into the woods with a shephe