Annotation Log: Oedipus the King

As you read Oedipus the King, make annotations using a log on notebook paper. As you read, mark passages that are evidence of the following themes ideas, motifs, and facts. For each annotation, mark theme or motif, meaning, page number, and lines.

1. Characterization/Themes:

1.  Oedipus has a tremendous passion for discovering the truth about himself. (theme of self-knowledge)

2.  Oedipus is very eager to please the citizens and is generally a good ruler. (theme of leadership)

3.  Oedipus demonstrates sudden, unreasonable rage and is, in this way, not a good ruler. (theme of leadership)

4.  Oedipus has great confidence in human intelligence, especially his own, and believes that he can control his fate.(theme of human knowledge (limitation) versus divine knowledge)

5. Creon & Tiresias act as foils to Oedipus (theme of logos/logic versus irrationality/emotion)

6. The gods maintain supreme power over humans. (theme of fate versus free will)

2.Motifs-recurring images that highlight theme—After finding these, assign each motif a theme. (Use the themes above as answer choices.)

1.  nautical/ship imagery Theme of ______

2.  fire and water imagery Theme of ______

3.  sight/blindness imagery Theme of ______

4.  light/dark imagery Theme of ______

5.  prophecy Theme of ______

6.  fate Theme of ______

3. Irony-label as either verbal, situational, dramatic—explain irony—give page and line#

4. Pathos (label as either pity or fear—also label each as character feelings or audience feelings)
Comment on the following Quotation:

“It is a surprising thing that the tragedy of Sophocles does not call up indignant repudiation in his audience…For fundamentally, it is an amoral work: it absolves men from moral responsibility, exhibits the gods as promoters of crime and shows the impotence of the moral struggles of men which struggle against crime. It might easily be supposed that the material of the legend had in view an indictment of the gods and fate; and in the hands of Euripides, the critic and enemy of the gods, it would probably have become such an indictment. But with the devout Sophocles, there is no question of an application of that kind. The difficulty is overcome by the pious sophistry that to bow to the will of the gods is the highest morality, even when it promotes crime.”