Figurative Language

Quotation Identification

Greek Tragedy

Greek Theatre Plot

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• Your own eyes must tell you: Thebes is tossed on a murdering sea and cannot lift her head from the death surge. A rust consumes the buds of the earth…Death alone battens upon the misery of Thebes.

• Extended Metaphor

• I who saw your days call no man blest—your great days like ghosts gone.

• simile

Question 1 - 30

Creon:That above all I must dispute

with youOedipus:That above all I will not hear

you deny.

• Parallelism/Repetition

• Poor children! You may be sure I know all that you longed in your coming here. I know that you are deathly sick; and yet, sick as you are, no one is as sick as I.

• Verbal Irony

• The Delphic stone of prophecies remembers ancient regicide and a still bloody hand.

• Metonomy

• Why should anyone in this world be afraid, since fate rules us and nothing can be foreseen? A man should live only for the present day.

• Jocasta

• No man can judge that rough unknown or trust in second sight, for wisdom changes hands among the wise.

• Chorus

• Listen to me; you mock my blindness do you? But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind. You cannot see the wretchedness of your life.

• DAILY DOUBLE

• Teiresias

• I say I take the son’s part, just as though I were his son, to press the fight for him and see it won!

• Daily Double

• Oedipus

• Think of this first: would any sane man prefer power, with all the king’s anxieties, to the same power of grace and sleep?

• Creon

• O Lord Apollo! May your news be as fair as your face radiant.

• Invocation

• The tyrant … who drinks from his great sickening cup recklessness and vanity, until from his high crest headlong he plummets to the dust of hope

• Peripeteia

• Oedipus—the simple man who knows nothing—I thought it out myself, no birds to help me!

• Hubris

• All the prophecies!—Now, O Light, may I look on you for the last time, I Oedipus, Oedipus damned in his birth, damned in his marriage!

• Anagnorisis

Jocasta:Set your mind at rest, if it is a

question of soothsayers, I tell you that you will find no man whose craft gives knowledge of the unknowable. Here is my proof…

Oedipus:Just now while you were speaking: it

chilled my heart.

• Tragic Irony

• The area where the Chorus filed in was called the ________?

• parados

• Name two functions of the Chorus

• Name two functions of an actor’s mask.

• According to Greek legend, who was the first actor?

• Thespis

• How many of Sophocles’ plays survive in their entirety?

• Seven

• Outline the state of Thebes at the beginning of the play. Cite two specific examples.

• Affected by plague: death, sickness, famine.

• Outline the parts of Oedipus’ proclamation to Thebes.

• Murderer will be exiled• Accomplices will be ostracized• May not protect this person• Oedipus himself is not exempt

• What motif does Sophocles use to discuss the paradox of truth in the play? Be specific.

• Day/night• Darkness/light

• Name Oedipus’ two daughters. Hypothesize why they are in the end of the play.

• Antigone and Ismene• Relate to the trilogy of Greek

tragedy• Enforce the theme of

unforeseen influence in one’s actions.

• What is the main moral of the play as stated by the Chorus at the end of the Exodos?