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Oedipus Rex

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Oedipus Rex and Antigone- Sophocles

“Oedipus Rex” and “Antigone”, plays by the Greek playwright Sophocles take place in the land of Thebes and have their central ideas as the question of justice. The two plays have several attributes in common and also have some differences. Both plays fall under the tragedy genre where the respective kings, King Oedipus in “Oedipus Rex” and King Creon in “Antigone”, display lack of justice and get punished as a result.
In “Oedipus Rex”, King Oedipus displays lack of justice by killing the former king (Laius) and all his servants, except one, mercilessly. He also committed a sin by marrying his own mother. Similarly, King Creon displays lack of justice in the play “Antigone”, by denying the burial of Polenysis and he displays cruelty by being the immediate cause for the death of Antigone, the death of his son and the queen as well. In both plays, the curses on the land of Theses came out of the sins of the respective kings.
Fate has a critical role in both plays. In “Oedipus Rex”, King Oedipus knew that he would kill his father and breed children from his own mother. That made him leave Corenth to get rid of his supposedly parents. But the return of Oedipus to Thebes paved the way for the prophecy to occur. In “Antigone”, King Creon couldn’t listen to the words of the blind prophet and paid the price for his ignorance.
In the two plays, justice was realized in a similar way; which is through the punishment of the kings who disrespected the will of the gods and the will of ordinary Thebans. Even if no evil deed went unpunished in either of the plays, the justice didn’t come in the form of compensation for those who suffered from the lack of justice (Antigone, Polyneicesand Theban citizen in the play “Antigone” and Laius and his servants in the play “Oedipus Rex”).
Every major character dies or suffers in both plays. The two

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