Oedipus The King, 5

Sophicles uses the plot to evoke fear and pity in the audience. His biggest tool is the knowlege that the audiance already has about Oedipus. They know that he killed his father and married his mother but Oedipus doesn't know this.

At the begginging of the play Oedipus blames his best friend Creon for killing Lius because he thinks Creon wants his power. The audiance knows that Oedipus killed Lius and pities Oedipus for blaming his friend without the knowlege that he himself was the killer of Lius but he didn't know. Also the audiance watches as Oedipus and Jocasta slowly realize the truth about their situation and not only does this create pity but also a fear for what will happen.

Sophicles also uses forshadowing to create fear. Tiresies is blind and Sophicles forshadows Oedipus becoming blind. The audiance realizes this and becomes apprehensive and scared about Oedipus' future in the play.

However the strongest expiriance of pity the audiance has in the play is when the messanger tells the corus about how Oedipus gouged out his eyes and his wife's corpses eyes when he found her dead. The audiance sees how powerful Oedipus' emotions were for him to do this and this realization is what evokes thier pity for teh characters.

The final way the audiance expiriances these emotions is through the corus. Not only the context of what they say but also how they act the part. The members of the corus winess almost the entire play from the stage with the audiance and even though they are in the play the audiance can relate to them. The members of the corus would be a normal social status and so its natural for the audiance to relate from them. By conecting with the corus teh audiance will also pick up on what emotions the corus is portraying and how they are reacting to the plot. The only thing that is diffrent is that the corus doesn't know the end of the story but because of this teh audiance can see and expiriance the from both the knowlegable and innocent points of view at the same time.