An Intellectual and Emotional Response to Oedipus the KingAs I read the play Oedipus the King, my response to the work became clearer and clearer as the play continued. When I finished the play, my reaction to the work and to two characters in particular was surprising and very different from my reaction when I was still reading. My first reaction was the text, and it was mainly intellectual. I felt cheated by the play because the challenge of solving the mystery of the plot was spoiled for me by the obvious clues presented in the work. My second response was not as intellectual; instead, it came more from a feeling the piece evoked in me. I felt a strong disappointment at the drastic measures taken by Oedipus and Jocasta at the end of the play. My two different responses to Oedipus the King, one intellectual and the other not, now seem to feed off and amplify each other as if they were a single collective response. The plot of the play, in a word, develops like this. After solving the riddle of the Sphynx, who kept Thebes under a sort of curse, Oedipus is invited to become king of the city. He married Jocasta, the widow of the previous king, and they had two children. When the play begins, Thebes is once again under some sort of curse and Oedipus attempts to discover the cause so that he can save the city. He is told that the cause of the curse is that the murderer of the previous king is still in the city and has gone unpunished. While searching for the murderer, Oedipus discovers that he himself is responsible and that he is in reality the son of Jocasta and her previous husband. Horrified by his sins of incest and murder, Oedipus claws out his eyes. Jocasta commits suicide because she is so dishonored. My disappointment with the lack of mystery in the play's plot was hinted at by the continuous clues appearing throughout the play. For example, in Oedipus's first speech to the people of Thebes, he condemns the murderer of the previous king, saying that "he will suffer no unbearable punishment, nothing worse than exile" (261-62). This is the first of many clues to the outcome of the play..