Point of View/Characters: From whose point of view is the story told? Does this change? How reliable is the narrative voice? How well does the reader get to know the characters? How credible are they? How are they presented? How does the writer persuade us to like/sympathize with some characters and dislike others?
In Sophocles’ play “Oedipus the King” the 3rd person point of view is used the entire time. This 3rd person view is maintained throughout the first part of the play. It’s a 3rd person limited view because the reader never learns what Oedipus and Creon and the priest…etc. were thinking without them actually verbally saying it. There is no real narrative voice that can be seen except for the occasional stage direction. The chorus could be considered a narrator as well, however they are not as accurate. The reader gets to know the characters through stage directions and the vast majority of the time they learn about the characters through the verbal action that is going on and based off of what the characters say and do. The writer makes us look at Oedipus in a positive light at the beginning when he talks to the crowd and to the priests and makes him look like the all-caring benevolent ruler, but that guise is soon cast away when he begins to make rash accusations toward Creon and Tiresias. This gives him an angry and over-assuming demeanor. These accusations are what Sophocles uses to put Creon and Tiresias under a bad light and take away their legitimacy. Sophocles makes the reader sympathize for Creon because of the unjust assumptions that Oedipus makes of him, and the reader also feels some sympathy for Tiresias because not only is he blind but no one believes what he is saying.
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