Trial of Oedipus The King

A book report on the trial of Oedipus the King, who has been accused of the murder of his father, King Laius, and marrying Jocasta, his mother, can be custom written by Paper Masters. This book report will include the formal speech of Oedipus, in which he outlines the charges brought against him, and offers a defense for those charges. The book report will demonstrate that although he believes he is also a victim in this case, Oedipus does not ask for forgiveness. Instead the blind Oedipus asks only that the jury understand that he was blind to the truth even when his eyes were still in their sockets, and did not know that he had either a mother or father until it was too late. Furthermore, he was a victim of an inescapable fate, which was determined at his birth and which he could only act as the gods demanded.

Oedipus the King began by recounting the accusation that he had killed his father. He admitted that he killed a man whom he later found to be his father, but Oedipus did not know that Laius was his father. Oedipus explained that he has learned that his birth was accompanied by a prophecy that he would someday kill his own father and marry his own mother. After hearing this prophecy, Laius ordered the baby killed, but an old servant could not kill the infant and gave Oedipus to a childless Corinthian king and queen instead. Oedipus noted that if the servant would have left him to die rather than allowing him to live, the lives of his father and mother would have been spared.

However, the infant was spared and Oedipus grew up without knowing his true parents. When he met Laius on a road during a hunting exhibition, he believed his father was a Corinthian King, not Laius, King of Thebes. In fact, when Oedipus met Laius and his party on the road that fateful day, he did not even know he was a king. Furthermore, he did not set out to murder anyone, he was only defending himself against uneven odds. Oedipus assured the jury that if he had known that Laius was either a king or his father, he would not have killed him. Oedipus claimed he was blind to the true identity of the man whom he killed, and that neither fate nor the gods would have allowed him act in any other way.