Point of View/Characters: From whose point of view is the story told? Does this change? How reliable is the narrative voice? How well does the reader get to know the characters? How credible are they? How are they presented? How does the writer persuade us to like/sympathize with some characters and dislike others?
Oedipus the King is a play, so it is written in dialogue. It is not told from a particular person’s point of view. Because it is written in a kind of third person limited, the reliability of the narrator does not really come into play. The audience is feeling the characters’ confusion, anger, frustration, and all of their other emotions. Another reason the reliability is not a huge factor in this play is because the audience already knows the plot. This creates a sense of irony because the audience is watching the characters struggle with the situations they are in, but the people watching the play already know what is going to happen.
The reader gets to know the characters fairly well because the characters are expressing their emotions and thoughts through the dialogue. Through the dialogue though, the reader does not learn anything of where the character came from or how the background of the character influences the actions he/she takes. This is a downfall of reading a play because it is all dialogue and no filler information. The reader has to infer why a character is influenced to do what he/she does.
Oedipus is the protagonist, as indicated by the title of the play. There are other supporting characters that influence the reader’s opinion of him as well. The chorus is the “character” that provides inside information to the reader, but it is always in somewhat of a riddle. The author causes the reader to sympathize with Oedipus by expressing Oedipus’ emotions through the dialogue.
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