There are two styles of written works that I appreciate more than others, and for various reasons: philosophical/theological and tragic. I think that I like both genres because they are often concerned with the same issues. Both beg the audience to ask: "what is the nature of this world and our place in it," two questions that are often difficult to engage and assess. While reading "Oedipus Rex," written by Sophocles, we are going to try to engage these questions at a very basic level.
The purpose of this sort of analysis is not to definitively acknowledge one perspective over another, or to even acknowledge a right or wrong answer, but our purpose is to develop critical reasoning and assesment skills. In our attempt we will be generally assuming, as the Greeks did, that there is a thing called "fate" that is working out in the character's lives in either a real way or in a figurative way. We are then going to attempt to discern, through literary analysis, how much of their life was determined by fate and how much was determined by free will. As we do this we will be developing our inferential skills by relying on textual evidence and assessment through intertextuality.
To help us in our endeavor to learn and understand this complicated tale, I have provided a great link below. Each 60 Second Recap covers a different aspect of the tale. The first fifteen videos are about Oedipus Rex, while the others are about sundry other tragic works and such. I hope this resource helps you!
60 Second Recap - Oedipus (Playlist)
