#1 - Oedipus Rex

First book. Wow. I went to the library for the first time in ages, in a rush after setting my heart on this goal. I grabbed as many of the first 5 books on my list as I could, and hurried back home. The first one was this: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.

The first blindside came before I even checked the book out. It was a trilogy! Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Antigone? Hold on a moment. Wasn't Antigone already on my list somewhere else? I scanned ahead and there it was, number 54. It took me until a couple of days after I read it to make the connection to some vague Greek I had in my head - "rex" means king. Oedipus Rex was only referring to the first of the trilogy. Apparently Oedipus at Colonus was the only one undeserving of a place on the list, which I thought rather unfair.

So instead I read them as one solid work, and I believe that was a good idea. They are a complete unit, as many works of the Greek tragedies are. They tell the story of a famous family over multiple generations and multiple time periods. This had to be done because according to the Greek dramatic laws, time had to be real. There was no quantum leaps, no changing of setting.

The next interesting thing was that the book was not subtle. The big plot twist was clean as day. Perhaps it is because I have a CSI-trained mind, but the prophecies seemed so obvious that I was surprised that Oedipus himself did not see it. Then I realized that the entire audience also knew the plot in advance. There was no tricking these wily Greeks. That left Sophocles to just write good words, and that he did. There was humour, irony, flowery language. A nice trick was the way that the chorus simply recaps the events, in more verbose stylings.

The Greeks really knew how to make a tragedy tragic. If they were to make a "Dumbledore dies on page 647" shirt for Oedipus, they would need to use a smaller font. Everyone dies, and the more gruesome the better. However, again as a Greek theatre law, all of the violence is left off-stage. It provides a nice bit of suspense because whenever a messenger comes in, you know that SOMEBODY is about to hear some bad news.

On the whole, this was the perfect start to this adventure. There is nothing more classic than the Greeks, and all in all it was an easy read, with only around 6000 lines of text. I enjoyed the book wholly, and while I doubt I'll read it again, it felt like it took up a little niche in my empty brain-space.

8/10

(Note: While I am loathe to make a marking system for this, I feel like a reviewer, and my opinions may fluctuate from day to day, so I must do as I see fit.)