ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL?

Sophocles’ Oedipus the Tyrant seems to be a perfect tragedy because it inspires so effectively both pity and fear (see Aristotle Poetics 1452a32-33, 1453a5-22, 1455a16-18). The story moves us to pity, since Oedipus falls so suddenly from the greatest prosperity to the greatest misery and shame, and since he ultimately commits the very patricide and incest he has striven so mightily to avoid.

Yet Sophocles’ story of Oedipus does not end with the terrifying Oedipus the Tyrant but rather with the hopeful tale of the apotheosis of Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus. At the beginning of the play, Oedipus is the most accursed of men, shunned by men and gods for having committed the most monstrous crimes, condemned to a life of squalor, wandering from town to town as a helpless, blind beggar, accompanied only by his almost equally helpless daughter Antigone.¹ Yet by the end of the play, we see him protected and honored by Athens, triumphant ^[41] over his enemies, and apparently rewarded by the gods with the greatest of all rewards, everlasting well-being after death. Sophocles' tale of the quintessentially tragic Oedipus, then, has a miraculously happy ending.^[42]

The stunning reversal of fortune that Oedipus undergoes in Oedipus the Tyrant is itself reversed in Oedipus at Colonus (Whitman 1971, 196—7). Oedipus the Tyrant ends with the chorus's reflections on the miserable fragility of human life (1524-30). But Oedipus at Colonus ends with the conclusion that Oedipus was rewarded by the gods after his death. First, the chorus of Athenian elders prays that he be rewarded: “For since many woes came [to you] without cause, may a just deity once again exalt you” (1565—7). Then, according to a messenger, Antigone, the chorus, and Theseus, Oedipus is so rewarded (1661—5; see 1705—8, 1722—3, 1751—3). Sophocles' tale of Oedipus apparently ends by affirming that the gods — led by “Zeus, all-ruling of gods, all-seeing,” with whom “Justice” sits — protect the just, no matter how weak, and lift up the righteous, no matter how far they have fallen. In this way, the play would seem to vindicate our hopes for divine justice and happiness.^[43]