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MonkeyNotes-Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
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It is also possible to look at the play as a kind of initiation rite.
Oedipus undergoes a process of regeneration or rectification of the
soul. After his tragic transgressions against his own parents, who
rejected him at birth, he must now be reborn to a new life, wherein
his old identity as sinner is discarded and his new potential as
reformed saint is to be actualized. The play sums up what the old
maxim says: "Every sinner has a future, as every saint has a past".
Some of the other motifs of the play are the Themes of life as a
journey and man as a wanderer and outcast. It also shows time and
its changes as shapers of human destiny and suffering as an agent
of knowledge. In fact, this play is so replete with layers of rich
meaning that it is almost inexhaustible in its deeper implications
about the complexity of human life, as well as the mystery of
death. Even contemporary affairs in the political life of 5th
Century B.C. Athens are subtly incorporated into Oedipus At
Colonus, though it is the most deeply spiritual of Sophocles' plays
and is hardly concerned with the harsher realities of materialistic
existence. The principal theme of Oedipus At Colonus is,
obviously, the redemption of the essentially noble spirit of Oedipus
from the consequences of his earlier errors. Yet this play provides
more scope for the treatment of subsidiary Themes than any other
of Sophocles' seven extant plays.
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