This Resource is for Year 12 students studying Sophocles ‘Oedipus the King’ in the VCE Victorian Curriculum for Unit 3 AOS1 Reading and Responding to Texts.

Author

Sophocles leading dramatist in Greek classical period 500-323 BC

Year Performed

430 BC at the festival of Dionysia

Type & Genre

Greek tragedy play – like an ancient murder mystery

Perspective

Greek audience came to watch the play to learn about life through what happens to Oedipus and his fate

Title

In the original Greek, Sophocles’ play was entitled ‘Oidipous Tyrannos’; once the play was translated to Latin, it became ‘Oedipus Rex’, and then in English, ‘Oedipus the King’. The original title aptly included the term ‘tyrannos’, meaning a king with no legitimate claim to the throne, a nod to Oedipus’ belief that he is not descended from Cadmus’ lineage.

Structure of a Greek Tragedy

Peripeteia = A tragedy must have some kind of reversal of fortune – the fall of the tragic hero – Oedipus experiences a peripeteia after the Messenger from Corinth sets off the chain of events that leads to his destruction.

Anagnorisis = The recognition scene when the tragic hero becomes aware of their reversal. Oedipus anagnorisis occurs when he realises that he is the lost son of Laius and Jocasta.

Hamartia = Known as the tragic flaw where heroes have a frailty or make some kind of error that leads to their downfall.

Catharsis = The goal is to create catharsis in the audience to evoke both horror and pity.

Brief Overview of ‘Oedipus the King’

‘Oedipus the King’ written by Sophocles for the Great Dionysia celebration, is a Greek tragedy that is read like a kind of ancient murder mystery. The play is regarded as a classic example of the ‘tragedy of fate’. The hero of the play is his own destroyer, he is the detective who tracks down and identifies the criminal, who turns out to be himself. It is the story of a great but flawed man, doomed to perform the most heinous crimes, despite doing everything he thinks he can to prevent the hideous web that fate has spun for him. The play tells the story of Oedipus, ruler of Thebes who discovers on a terrible day that he is the lost son of the previous king, his father Laius, and his wife Jocasta. This leads to a chain of tragic events that is unveiled as Oedipus unwittingly killed his father (parricide – murder of a parent by a child) and married his mother (incest – sexual relationship of son with mother). Written over 2000 years ago, suggests that fate is determined and the gods have active roles in people’s lives. These ideas were commonly accepted in Sophocles time but are not widely accepted now. Oedipus gradual realisation of his fate, and of the terrible crimes he has unknowingly committed, might be considered impossible or implausible to modern society. However, in the world of ancient Greece, it is possible to see Oedipus determined quest to uncover the truth for the sake of his city Thebes and his deep remorse for the errors of his past, as very recognisable and sympathetic qualities. The action of the play occurs many years after the horrible events, on the fateful day when the truth behind them comes to light.

Timeline of Events Oedipus the King

Lines	Events
1-85	The priest, talking with Oedipus, tells him Thebes is under a curse and the city needs his help again.
86-150	Creon learns from Apollo that the curse on Thebes resulted from King Laius’ murder. The city must banish the murderer to lift the curse.
151-215	The Chorus calls on various Olympians to aid Thebes.
216-275	Oedipus asks the Thebans to help him find and expel Laius’ murderer. He avidly begins an all-out manhunt.
276-379	The blind priest Tiresias has information about the plague, which he refuses to divulge. After much prodding from Oedipus, Tiresias claims that Oedipus is the source of the curse.
380-461	Oedipus alleges that Creon and Tiresias are conspiring against him. Tiresias tells Oedipus to learn the truth about his parents and then forecasts Oedipus’ downfall.
462-531	Creon, talking with the Chorus, denies the charges of collusion with Tiresias.
532-633	Oedipus threatens to execute or deport Creon. Creon maintains his innocence and advises Oedipus to consult Apollo.
634-678	Oedipus’ wife, Jocasta, and the Chorus defend Creon and convince Oedipus not to kill or banish him.
679-725	Oedipus explains Tiresias’ prophecy to Jocasta; Jocasta counters that not all of Apollo’s vision come true and cites King Laius as an example.
726-770	Jocasta recounts Laius’ murder. Oedipus has the first suspicions that he may have killed Laius.
771-863	Oedipus tells about the group of travellers he murdered. Oedipus demands to see the lone survivor of the group to confirm if he indeed killed Laius.
864-910	Chorus calls on the gods for help.
911-974	A messenger tells Oedipus that the King of Corinth is dead and that Oedipus is to assume the throne. Oedipus refuses to return, for fear of fulfilling Apollo’s prophecy that Oedipus would sleep with his mother.
975-1076	Messenger tells Oedipus that he is not, in fact, the son of Polybus (the dead King of Corinth): A herdsman rescued Oedipus, after he was exposed as an infant, and turned the baby Oedipus over to the messenger himself. Jocasta becomes convinced that Oedipus murdered Laius.
1077-1185	Oedipus brings in the herdsman who rescued him as a child. Oedipus squeezes the information out of the herdsman and realizes that he is the son of Laius and Jocasta, killed his father (Laius) and slept with his mother (Jocasta).
1186-1297	Long lament by the Chorus. A second messenger reports Jocasta’s suicide.
1298-1422	Oedipus blinds himself. Oedipus claims he will suffer more by blinding himself than by suicide.
1423-1475	Oedipus asks Creon to banish him from Thebes and administer rites to Jocasta.
1476-1515	Oedipus laments for his daughters, Antigone and Ismene.
1516-1530	Conclusion. Chorus indicates that Oedipus will continue to live after the tragedy’s ending.

Brief Character Analysis

Oedipus

At the beginning of the play, the eponymous character believes himself to be the son of Polybus and Merope, the King and Queen of Corinth. Oedipus had been granted the throne of Thebes because of his ingenuity in defeating the Sphinx, who had cursed Thebes and was terrorising its citizens. An additional part of Oedipus’ reward was marriage to Jocasta, the widowed wife of the former king, Laius. Unbeknownst to Oedipus, he has married his biological mother, having previously murdered Laius on a road far outside Thebes, not realising that Laius was the King of Thebes, nor that Laius was his biological father.

Most aspects of his character revolve around the question: to what extent is Oedipus guilty of the fate that befalls him? He has a wide range of personality traits both positive – bravery & cunning. But he also has negative traits – hubris (pride), foolish, naïve, hot tempered, authoritarian, paranoid, lacks insight into his faults, denies the truth. By the end of the play his traits have changed to be more humble even though blinded he sees the truth more clearly.

Jocasta

Oedipus’ wife (and unknowingly his mother) does not enter the play until the conflict between Oedipus and Creon is well underway. She is immediately presented to the audience as a confident woman and one whom the people respect. As Queen of Thebes she was married to King Laius and is the mother of Oedipus whom she had abandoned on Mount Cithaeron when he was three days old. She becomes the unwitting wife of her own son not long after the death of her husband and bears Oedipus 4 children – 2 sons Eteocles and Polyneices and 2 daughters Antigone and Ismene.

Aspects of her character revolve around the question: how could a mother abandon her own newborn child? She appears a jaded person haunted by fate and her past. The audience and the Chorus share sympathy with her horror of realising the terrible outcome of her past and the consequences of marrying her own son. At the end of the play Jocasta suicides because she cannot live with herself, but also because, as a woman, she cannot live within society.

Creon

Creon is Jocasta’s brother and at the start of the play Oedipus brother-in-law but also his uncle. Creon is respected by the people of Thebes and is initially regarded by Oedipus as a loyal and trusted friend. Despite their relationship souring, and Oedipus even viewing Creon as the antagonist at times, he is in fact the hero of this tale. He shares Oedipus’ desire to save Thebes from destruction and is equally determined to search for the truth behind the oracle.

Positive aspects of his character are held up by Sophocles as the man we should aspire to be: steadfast without stubbornness, confident without arrogance. He even bears the quality most commonly regarded as being essential for a good king: he does not want to be one. Where Oedipus is aggressive and headstrong, Creon is reasoned, temperate, cautious and content with his position of not being king with all the worries.

Tiresias

The character of Tiresias, whose name literally means ‘portent’, was included in many Ancient Greek myths and tragedies. He is revered by the Thebans, who refer to him as ‘Lord Tiresias’ and claim he ‘sees with the eyes of Lord Apollo’ [323]. Despite the esteem in which he is held by the Chorus, Tiresias’ role in Oedipus the King is a tragic one. He unwillingly comes to Thebes at Oedipus’ behest, and endeavours to conceal his knowledge, because he knows ‘the truth is only pain to him who sees’ [360]. He is threatened and taunted by Oedipus, who not only is ignorant of the knowledge Tiresias holds, but also unaware of the kindness Tiresias attempts to show Oedipus in bearing the burden of being the one in whom ‘the truth lives … [in] him alone’ [339].

The Priest

The Priest of Thebes plays an important role within his community, as well as in this play, as it is his treatment of Oedipus that sets the tone for Sophocles’ interpretation of the mythological character of Oedipus. While Oedipus presents himself as a god among men when he questions why the Chorus is ‘pray[ing] to the gods’ when he will ‘grant [their] prayers’ [245], the Priest identifies Oedipus as the ‘first of men’ [41], and he has already clearly stated that Oedipus ‘cannot equal the gods’ [39]. The Priest’s distinction between the gods and men (even the ‘first of men’) challenges Oedipus to step back from his hubris, however, Oedipus responds to the Priest’s words with excessive references to himself and all he feels and all he has done.

While the Priest’s role seems to be that of a grounding agent, persistently reminding Oedipus of his status, and that even in Oedipus’ greatest triumph ‘a god was with [him]’ [48], there are inconsistencies that feed into Oedipus’ sense of grandeur and blur the line between respect for a king and worship of a god.

The Chorus

As a standard in Greek drama the Chorus have a double identity – one within the plot and one outside of it. The Chorus in the plot identity is as a group of Theban citizens to fulfill duties of answering questions about characters and events and as an intermediary between characters. The outside the plot role is to comment on social, religious and historical meaning of the unfolding action of the play.

THEMES
fate versus free will & prophecy	wisdom	blindness figurative versus literal
choice & freedom	cost of ignorance & value of knowledge	morality & the good life
truth	power & tyranny as ruler	hubris (pride)
banishment & exile	identity	family
determination	self-discovery

SYMBOLS & METAPHORS
truths & half truths	blindness	eyes & vision
hearing & listening	nautical	light & dark
swollen ankles & feet	the cross roads	the oracle

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum

This Resource on Key Themes and Quotes in the play ‘Oedipus the King’ by Sophocles is for Year 12 Students studying in the Victorian VCE Curriculum.

Fate vs Free Will / Prophecy

The play is known as a tragedy of destiny – its tragic effect is said to lie in the contrast between the supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them. The lesson is to learn from the tragedy – submission to the divine will and realisation of his own impotence [powerlessness].

The play hinges on two prophecies. The first is the prophecy received by King Laius of Thebes that he would have a son by Queen Jocasta who would grow up to kill his own father. The second is the prophecy that Oedipus received that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus all work to prevent the prophecies from coming to pass, but their efforts to thwart the prophecies are what actually bring the prophecies to completion.

This raises a question at the heart of the play: does Oedipus have any choice in the matter? He ends up killing his father and marrying his mother without knowing it? Does he have free will—the ability to choose his own path—or is everything in life predetermined?

Oedipus’s destruction comes not from his deeds themselves but from his persistent efforts to learn the truth, through which he reveals the true nature of those terrible deeds. Oedipus himself makes a different argument at the end of the play, when he says that his terrible deeds were fated, but that it was he alone who chose to blind himself. Here, Oedipus is arguing that while it is impossible to avoid one’s fate, how you respond to your fate is a matter of free will.

For the Chorus, prophecy is synonymous with the will and knowledge of the gods that “destiny will guide me”, although they do at times waver in this devotion under the influence of their loyalty to Oedipus.

Quotes

“This day will bring your birth and your destruction” (Tiresias line 499 p.184)

“An oracle came to Laius one fine day … and it declared / that doom would strike him down at the hands of a son / our son, to be born of our own flesh and blood” (Jocasta lines 784-8 p.201)

“Apollo was explicit: my son was doomed to kill my husband … my son, poor defenceless thing, he never had a chance to kill his father. They destroyed him first” (Jocasta lines 944-7 p.208)

“It’s all chance / chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth / can see a day ahead, groping through the dark / Better to live at random, best we can” (Jocasta lines 1069-72 p.215)

“I count myself the son of Chance / the greatest goddess” (Oedipus lines 1188-9 p.224)

“Destiny guide me always / Destiny find me filled with reverence pure in word and deed” (Chorus lines 954–956 p.209)

Sight vs Blindness

Oedipus lack of wisdom is highlighted by the central idea of blindness. When Oedipus publicly declares his intention to solve the mystery of King Laius’s murder like a determined detective seeking the truth, he says, “I’ll start again—I’ll bring it all to light myself” but his overarching pride is his true blind spot. Oedipus’s vision and intelligence have made him a great king of Thebes—he solved the riddle of the Sphinx and revitalized the city. But he is blind to the truth about his own life and cannot see the truth clearly.

Ironically it takes the blind prophet, Tiresias, to point out his ignorance and to plant the first seeds of doubt in Oedipus’s mind. Tiresias first informs him of his fate by speaking in riddles. He tells Oedipus: ”Eyes hast though, but thy deeds thou canst not see.” In this, Tiresias tells Oedipus is blind even though he may have working eyes. He then warns him that this will not always be the case, when he says, ”in thine eyes now light, but then darkness.”

Oedipus responds to Tiresias’ riddles with anger. He asks the prophet to speak plainly. When Oedipus mocks Tiresias’s blindness, Tiresias predicts that Oedipus himself will soon be blind and beggared, which comes true by the end of the play. Indeed, when Oedipus learns the full story—that he has killed his father and married his mother—he gouges out his eyes. He learns the nature of fate and the power of the gods, but at a great cost. Although he is blinded, he has learned to see something he could not see before (or perhaps chose not to see). He also asks to be exiled, eventually becoming a beggar.

Quotes

“I’ll start again—I’ll bring it all to light myself” (Oedipus line 150 p.167)

“You’ve lost your power, stone blind, stone death – senses, eyes blind as stone” (Oedipus lines 423-4 p.181)

“Blind, who now has eyes, beggar who now is rich, he will grope his way toward a foreign soil, a stick tapping before him step by step” (Tiresias lines 516-19 p.185)

“Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark. Better to live at random, best we can” (Jocasta lines 1070-1 p.215)

“What good were eyes to me? Nothing I could see bring me joy” (Oedipus lines 1472-3 p.241)

Truth

In his search for the truth Oedipus is engaged in a great calculation, to determine the measure of a man. However, the terrible deeds that are Oedipus’s undoing actually took place long before the play begins. King Laius has been dead for many years, Oedipus has ruled for some time, and his marriage to Jocasta has produced four children. They might have all remained happy in their ignorance had the plague not come to Thebes and the oracle not commanded that the murderer of Laius be found. Good king that he is, Oedipus swears he will find the murderer. Every step of the way, people are reluctant to speak and try to tell him that it would be better if the past were left alone. Creon suggests that they discuss the oracle behind closed doors, not in front of everyone, but Oedipus wants to show that he is open to the truth and keeps no secrets from his people.

Tiresias refuses to say what he knows, and only speaks when he has been insulted and accused of treachery. Jocasta begs Oedipus to cease his investigations. The old shepherd gives Oedipus the final pieces of the puzzle only when threatened with death. In his desire to seek out the truth and save his people from the plague, Oedipus becomes his own prosecutor, and then his own judge and punisher.

Oedipus is a free agent, by his own self-willed action he discovers that his own predicted destiny has already been fulfilled. His heroic achievement is the discovery of the truth about the prophecies, about the gods and about himself regardless of disaster.

Quotes

“Lord Tiresias sees with the eyes of Lord Apollo / Anyone searching for the truth, my king, might learn it from the prophet, clear as day” (Chorus Leader lines 323-5 p.174)

“How terrible to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees” (Tiresias lines 359-60 p.176)

Identity & Self-Discovery

In the play the consultation of oracles is strongly associated with the search for a character’s identity. All the characters in the play who seek the truth about themselves through the word of oracles – Laius, Jocasta and Oedipus – come to bad ends. Those characters who seek the truth about their fates and then once received the prophecy they go about trying to alter their fates. Sophocles is telling us that those people who try to alter their fates do so and court catastrophe.

Truth about his identity is the reason Oedipus consults the oracle in the first place after a drunken reveller at one of Polybus’ banquets accuses him of not being the king’s natural son. When the oracle offers a prophecy “you will kill your father and couple with your mother” Oedipus knows that he is the man who will do those deeds and it changes everything about him, marking him, from that moment on, with a new identity.

Before Oedipus learns his identity, he was – son of Polybus, husband of Jocasta, foreign to Thebes, savour of Thebes, King of Thebes and ‘tyrannos’ (signifies the throne was not gained through an inheritance). After he learns his identity, he is revealed to be – son of Laius, son of Jocasta, native to Thebes, scourge of Thebes, outcast and a ‘man of agony’.

“Count no man happy till he dies” by the Chorus is a theme that leads to self-discovery which suggests a causal link between Oedipus rise and his fall. The road to self-discovery adopted by Oedipus leads him to his downfall and tragic end. Oedipus knows the answers to the Sphinx riddles but does not know his past. Despite his popularity, knowledge and tireless efforts to make his kingdom safe. Oedipus, eventually falls in the pit of disgrace and discovers that he was just a pawn in the hands of nature or gods.

Quotes

“Here I am myself / you all know me, the world knows my fame / I am Oedipus” (Oedipus lines 7-9 p.159)

“I stand revealed at last / cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage / cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands” (Oedipus lines 1308-10 p.232)

“Count no man happy till he dies” (Chorus line 1684 p.251)

Cost of Ignorance & Value of Knowledge

Inscribed upon the pediment at Delphi was the maxim ‘Know thyself’. Sophocles definitively utilises the myth of Oedipus to chastise ignorance, but he also wants his audience to look inward: In what ways are we acting without the appropriate awareness? How can we become more aware in order to lead a better life?

Through his depiction of the character Oedipus, Sophocles criticises ignorance and celebrates awareness, especially self-awareness. Sophocles uses the events of the play to castigate Oedipus, and anyone else who would let themselves fall victim to such a fatal flaw. When Oedipus refers to himself as ‘ignorant’ [451], he believes he is being ironic, however, Sophocles includes this line to reinforce the degree to which Oedipus is truly ignorant. The play also emphasises how Oedipus’ arrogance feeds his ignorance (and vice versa). This is seen in his recollection of his greatest triumph: ‘I came by, Oedipus the ignorant, I stopped the Sphinx … the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark’ [450–453]. Sophocles’ heavy use of dramatic irony and characterisation of Oedipus as impulsive and falsely confident in his wit, ensures a stark contrast with the truth; that every choice Oedipus makes is marked by his ignorance, by what he does not know, or refuses to see.

Although much of the plot focuses on the ignorance of Oedipus, he is not the only character to sacrifice knowledge because of naivete. The Chorus grapple with a choice: the decision to ignore Tiresias, or to choose treason against Oedipus. Jocasta, too, is not only guilty of ignorance, but also of the greater sin of choosing ignorance. When Oedipus is on the cusp of learning the truth, Jocasta urges him (and herself), ‘don’t even think—’ [1159]. When this first attempt fails, Jocasta calls for Oedipus to ‘stop— in the name of god’ [1163]. The truth has dawned on her, and she is afraid. It is Creon, once again, who acts as a model for Sophocles’ values. In his argument with Oedipus, Creon uses logic, not insults and bias, to point out that the oracle he reported from Delphi can be easily confirmed. Then, when confronted with a statement he cannot explain, he simply states: ‘I don’t know. And when I don’t, I keep quiet.’ [635]

Quotes

“I came by, Oedipus the ignorant, I stopped the Sphinx … the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark” (Oedipus lines 450-53 p.182)

“Can’t accept him [Tiresias], can’t deny him, don’t know what to say (Chorus line 551 p.187)

They “Saw [Oedipus] then … saw with our own eyes his skill, his brilliant triumph—” against the Sphinx (Chorus lines 569–570 p.187)

Don’t give it another thought, don’t even think” (Jocasta line 1159 p.222)

“Stop— in the name of god, if you love your own life, call off this search” (Jocasta line 1163-4 p.222)

“I don’t know. And when I don’t, I keep quiet” (Creon line 635 p.191)

Morality & The Good Life

Sophocles uses the character of Oedipus to explore the notion that one may have many admirable qualities, however, the subject ought not to balance the scales in favour of believing oneself capable of ‘grant[ing] prayers’ [245] meant for the gods.

Likewise, Sophocles holds Creon up as an example of a man capable of living a good life. He is flawed, but those flaws do not prevent him from living a life of pious respect and moderation. Creon recognises the good life he is already living, and when Oedipus’ downfall increases Creon’s power, the man who claimed to not ‘yearn for kingship’ [657] is consistent in that resolve; he does not ‘come to mock … Oedipus’ [1557], but quietly accepts his new role without long speeches or hasty decrees. Creon recognises the good in living a life where ‘all men sing [his] praises, all salute [him]’ [668] and questions ‘who in his right mind would rather rule and live in anxiety than sleep in peace?’ [654–655].

Sophocles uses frequent metaphors and allusions around sight and listening to show that Oedipus’ main moral sin is his lack of awareness. He murders without knowing who he murders, he marries without knowing whom he marries, and he acts with unbridled arrogance without acknowledging his place in the hierarchy of god and mortals.

Quotes

“You pray to the gods? Let me grant your prayers” (Oedipus line 245 p.171)

“Now all men sing my praises, all salute me” (Creon line 668 p.193)

“Who in his right mind would rather rule and live in anxiety than sleep in peace? (Creon lines 654–655 p.193)

Hubris (Pride)

Hubris (pride) is a favourite trait in Greek tragic heroes. It is clear that Oedipus has a wide range of personality traits both positive and negative. He exercised two of his best qualities – bravery and cunning to answer the riddle of the Sphinx. However, being impetuous he suffers from hubris, pride in himself, his skills and intelligence as a ruler, a detective, his ability to defy Apollo and fate. It was his pride that led him to believe he was above the will of the gods and destiny. It was his pride and hot temper that led him to kill Laius at the cross-roads. It was his pride that led him to bring curses down on an unknown culprit. He accused the blind seer Tiresias and his trusted brother-in-law Creon and friend of treachery. His fatal flaw of pride led him down to the path in search of a truth that he ought to have never learned.

Quotes

“Here I am myself – you all know me, the world knows my fame / I am Oedipus” (Oedipus lines 7-9 p.159)

“I’ll start again—I’ll bring it all to light myself” (Oedipus line 150 p.167)

“Pride breeds the tyrant / violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting” (Chorus lines 964-5 p.209)

Family

The theme of family is central as the driving events are Oedipus crimes of parricide and incest. Murdering one’s father and coupling with one’s mother is the worst crimes a man can commit in the family sphere and there are morals and ethics involved. Incest with one’s mother is a crime against nature as it is likely to result in children weakened by genetics.

Sophocles criticises Laius and Jocasta regarding disposing of their son and even the shepherd charged to get rid of the baby disobeys because he “pitied the little baby” (line 1301 p.232). Polybus of Corinth adopts the baby and is described as having “loved [him] deeply” (line 1121 p.219). The crime committed by Laius and Jocasta against the natural order to kill their first-born son and then engender no further heir is a profound political crime as well as social/family crime.

For all his faults Oedipus is a family man who will make almost any sacrifice not to hurt those he calls his own. Comparisons can also be made of family love at the end of the play with Oedipus scene of lament as he weeps about the future of his daughters Antigone and Ismene which is the opposite to Jocasta handing over her newborn son to a terrible death.

Quotes

“You were a gift” (Messenger line 1117 p.218)

“Then how could he love me so? He loved me, deeply” (Oedipus line 1121 p.219).

“But still / to see one’s parents and look into their eyes / is the greatest joy I know” (Oedipus lines 1094-6 p.216)

“Her own child / how could she” (Oedipus lines 1294-5 p.231)

“But my two daughters, my poor helpless girls … Take care of them/ I beg you” (Oedipus lines 1602-6 p.247)

“How I weep for you / I cannot see you now / just thinking of all your days to come, the bitterness, the life that rough mankind will thrust upon you” (Oedipus lines 1627-29 p.248)

Banishment & Exile

Types of banishment, whether physical or emotional flow from each of the 2 prophecies for Oedipus – the one received by Laius that he would be killed by his son and the other received by Oedipus himself that he would murder his father and mate with his mother. Oedipus decrees early in the play that the murderer of Laius will be banished from Thebes.

The first banishment occurs to Oedipus when he is only 3 days old and the callousness his parents exhibit towards their own child is emotional exile from the normal love and care and a home. The next banishment occurs when Oedipus leaves Corinth believing that to stay would mean murdering Polybus and sleeping with Merope. This exile is from a warm family environment and emotional torment means Oedipus will not see his adopted parents again. His third banishment is from Thebes where it has been established, he was the one who murdered Laius. The fourth banishment is worse when he realises, he definitely has murdered his father and mated with his mother he puts out his eyes and resolves to remove himself from the sight of all people. This is self-exile but from the human race where he requests an exile to Mount Cithaeron, the scene of his exile as a baby.

Quotes

“I order you, every citizen of the state / where I hold throne and power: banish this man … Drive him out, each of you, from every home / He is the plague, the heart of our corruption / as Apollo’s oracle has just revealed to me” (Oedipus lines 269-77 p.172)

“Drive me out of the land at once, far from sight / where I can never hear a human voice” (Oedipus lines 1571-2 p.245)

“Drive me out of Thebes, in exile” (Oedipus line 1667 p.250)

Power & Authority

Throughout the play, Sophocles explores questions around authority. In particular, he examines closely the dilemmas raised by competing obligations to the law, to one’s community, as well as to the gods, and to religion. Over the course of the play, the characters’ perspectives on authority and loyalty shift. The Priest attempts to set a standard, a measure by which citizens can sequence their obligations: ‘Now we pray to you. You cannot equal the gods, your children know that … But we do rate you first of men’ [39–41]. Through his evocation of the conflict experienced by the Chorus, Sophocles suggests that one should ideally never feel conflicted by the competing obligations to heavenly leaders and earthly ones, and that it is the responsibility of the earthly leaders to ensure their citizens are never placed in such a predicament.

At several points in the play, the Leader and the Chorus find themselves in difficult situations where they not only have to choose between their faith and their loyalty to Oedipus, but they also essentially need to lead Oedipus. The Leader confirms their role in society to Creon and their shrewd political instincts not to side with anyone, they ‘never look to judge the ones in power.’ [592–593]. Furthermore, Oedipus has a responsibility to his people to ‘steer [them] through the storm’ [767], not act the petulant child who needs to be coerced into behaving with the temperance of a good king.

However, is not Oedipus’ way. ‘No matter’ he asserts, ‘I must rule.’ [703]. This line shows a value shift in Oedipus; he sees maintaining control as more important than being right. Sophocles punishes Oedipus for this view, and again holds Creon up as an example of good leadership when he responds ‘Not if you rule unjustly’ [703]. Creon here asserts his view of the responsibility of leadership.

By the end of the play, the Chorus realise their faith in Oedipus was misplaced, and they rephrase their commitment, having learnt from the events before them: ‘god, my champion, I will never let you go’ [971]. And thus, Sophocles’ message to his audience, to dedicate oneself to the gods and have trust in their authority over all else, is underscored. It is possible to argue that the play is also subtly delivering a message to those with power that they should never compromise themselves or their citizens by creating a contradiction in obligation when it comes to the need to pay service to the gods and to society.

Quotes

“Now we pray to you. You cannot equal the gods, your children know that … But we do rate you first of men” The Priest lines 39–41 p.161)

“I never look to judge the ones in power” Chorus Leader lines 592–593 p.189)

“Now again, good helmsman, steer us through the storm” (Chorus line 767 p.199)

“No matter’ he asserts, ‘I must rule.’ (Oedipus line 703 p.195)

“Not if you rule unjustly” (Creon line 703 p.195)

“God, my champion, I will never let you go” (Chorus line 971 p.209)

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This Resource is for Year 12 students in the VCE English Curriculum studying ‘Bad Dreams and Other Stories’ by Tessa Hadley as a Text Response.

Essay Prompt: ‘Once the words were said aloud, she would never be rid of them; it was better to keep them hidden’. Quote the unnamed girl in ‘Bad Dreams’ story (p.116). “How does Hadley explore the idea of secrets in ‘Bad Dreams’?”

This essay uses a TEEL structure. Note – this essay is definitely too long with its word count, however, students can use it as a resource to create your own essay on ‘secrets’.

The Introduction is colour coded to help identify context of the issue, main contention and message of Hadley.

Introduction / Context / Main Contention / Message of Author

Secrets by nature create a barrier between people, preventing them from fully understanding and connecting with one another. The theme of secrecy and its destructive impact on relationships are central to many stories in Tessa Hadley’s collection Bad Dreams and Other Stories. Hadley illustrates how secrets can sometimes weigh heavily on the characters like a burden, performing a disciplinary function which characters conform to conventional ways of behaving. For others, the withholding of knowledge can yield a form of power or can preserve the privacy to explore one’s identity without the glare of scrutiny. Ultimately, Hadley offers a thought-provoking exploration of the destructive impact of secrecy on relationships and the need to find a balance between openness and privacy while navigating the complexities of trust and communication in relationships.

BP1 = Background / Who or what causes problems

(Topic Sentence) Characters often conceal truths from their loved ones in order to protect themselves. There is powerful symbolism in Hadley’s collection’s title ‘Bad Dreams’ which suggests various nightmares or simply unfulfilled dreams that characterise the experiences of the children and women in these stories. This is clear also in the epilogue to Swallows and Amazons created in the young girl’s own nightmare, symbolising the way in which women are disciplined into normative gender roles. The dualistic nature of secrets in the story kept by the unnamed girls thrills her. The sudden shift in perspective midway through the story draws attention to the paradoxical nature of secrets. Frightened by her nightmare and the horror or living to ‘a ripe old age’ like the ‘tame and sensible Susan’ (p.116), when she yearns to be the pirate girl Nancy, the girl tips over the lounge room furniture, a private moment of rebellion against the oppressive domesticity of her parent’s world, restoring a sense of control rocked by the implications of the nightmare. The vows to keep her nightmare from her parents as a secret that saying the words aloud would somehow render them more real, or that her fears would be dismissed by her parents – quote from the prompt. Hadley then uses a line break of 3 asterisk ellipses (p.120) to move over to the mother’s perspective as she surveys the living room with horror. Adopting a parallelism with her daughter, the second shifting of 3^rd person is the mother who misreads the upturned furniture and is unsettled by its implications. Believing it to be an act of criticism from her husband, she decides to refuse to acknowledge aloud ‘the message he’d left for her’ (p.125), keeping to herself the ‘awful truth’ that ‘her husband was her enemy’ (p.125), which is a secret she had kept even from herself and is only now acknowledging. The final change of perspective is when the narrative has a gap concluding in the morning events in the kitchen with the ‘young wife’ frying bacon for her husband. The ending is an epilogue layering another viewpoint to the story speaking of a sense of change and the transience of life and the epiphany the woman has about the way she sees life as the husband lovingly “puts his arms around her” (p.126). Along similar lines to Ruby in ‘Her Share of Sorrow’, the unnamed young girl in ‘Bad Dreams’ is also enthralled by the characters in her novel ‘Swallows and Amazons’ who cross ‘the threshold of safety into a thrilling unknown’ (p.115). While gaining experience can be revelatory for Ruby it is fraught with danger for the girl as the secret nature of her upturning the furniture thrills and empowers her but also has tragic consequences for the mother’s experience and the potential threat to her marriage. (Link Sentence back to Topic) The dualistic nature of secrets in ‘Bad Dreams’ in which the secret is kept by the girl affords a kind of power. On the other hand, the mother as an adult woman, is unsettled by its implications changing her view of her husband like the bad dream of the title.

BP2 = Response / how do individuals or groups respond to problems

(Topic Sentence) Secrets for some characters can become a burden, shaping the identity of those who carry them. On a similar note, to the title ‘Bad Dreams’, is the significance of the title ‘An Abduction’ that poses questions for the reader to consider if you can call what happened to Jane ‘an abduction’ if no one knew the event took place. The title poses questions in terms of societal morals and values if Daniel could indeed be classified as a rapist taking advantage of an under-age girl. Hadley does not answer these questions but the ending telescopes possible answers with the epilogue. The symbolism is important in the story when Jane returns home to find the discarded Jokari set still on the drive which is significant as she has been transformed from childhood to her awakening sexuality and her first formative experience that is tainted by Daniel’s faithlessness with Fiona. The leap forward prolepsis to a now divorced 55-year-old Jane exposes the ‘early initiation’ (p.27) into adulthood that has irrevocably shaped her conservatism. Keeping her time with Daniel a secret, Jane’s eventual revelation to her therapist highlights how she has carried this moment throughout her life “in a sealed compartment”. It seemed to have no effects” (p.27) but the word ‘seemed’ implies that there have in fact been significant consequences, although Jane never “connected her fears to anything that had happened to her” (p.27). The lack of closure to Jane’s therapy suggests that for her the secret remains unresolved. The ambiguity of the counsellor’s comment that Jane’s hesitant opening up was ‘something’ (p.28) could reveal the potential for Jane’s personal growth. What is clear however is the way that Jane’s adult life has formed around the secret she has kept. While Carrie in ‘One Saturday Morning’ does not transition from innocence the character of Jane in ‘An Abduction’ has a sexual journey and the lasting implications for this 15-year-old girl takes her from childhood to womanhood. After having a sexual encounter with Jane, Daniel has more power over an innocent child and literally seduces Jane’s desires to experience love making, but the reality is that Daniel rapes an innocent girl and does not remember the experience in later life. Hadley’s use of prolepsis of the narrative to the future shifts the perspective at the end of Jane’s story so readers recognise how Jane carried that sexual experience “in a sealed compartment” (p.27) throughout her life. The “early initiation” (p.27) into adulthood shaped Jane’s view about conservatism in her future life. (Link Sentence back to Topic) Hadley has made is clear in ‘An Abduction’ that the way in which Jane’s adult has been formed is due to the secret she has kept on her journey from innocence to adult knowledge.

BP3 = Consequences / Legacy for society and individuals

(Topic Sentence) Hadley illustrates how uncovering secrets can become a revelatory experience with the impacts that end up both shocking as well as enlightening. The title ‘The Stain’ is symbolic with the idea of a stain prefacing Marina’s understanding that ‘you couldn’t undo the knowledge’ (p.52) after confronting unpleasant realities. The grand house stands for ‘the grandeur and beauty’ (p.32) of the privileged life unfamiliar to the working-class Marina. However, the ‘dingy’ interior (p.32) creates a disjunct between perception and reality as Marina discovers the grubbiness of the old man and his family, his suspicious past with the SA Defence Force, his inappropriate overtures to Marina, the greediness of his family. While the details Anthony spells out about the old man’s past is ‘pretty murky’ (p.51) it is clear the old man committed some atrocity. Anthony exposes the secret as a strategy to manipulate Marina into refusing the old man’s financial gifts by appealing to her sense of morality. She is left ‘burdened’ by the knowledge of a secret (p.51) and she is reminded of the time she unexpectedly encountered the decaying corpse of a animal on a woodland walk. In that instance, she realised that ‘you couldn’t undo the knowledge of the thing’ (p.52) – an idea symbolically echoed when the old man dies, and the only resolution available to Marina is to refuse the house he bequeathed to her. The house is now stained by its occupant as well as Marina feeling sullied by her innocence. She can never undo the knowledge she now has. Everything looked unclean and had a ‘leering repulsive side’ (p.52).In comparison with the childhood experiences and transformations, Hadley explores in the story ‘The Stain’ the ways in which adult women of lower class interact in relationships with older more powerful men that causes the character of Marina to reassess her initial naive relationship with the man. After the old man’s birthday Anthony tells Marina of the old man’s involvement in the South African Defence Force and the “murky” accusations that followed. Marina is shocked at the discovery of this hidden secret past and her realisation the old man manipulated her makes her re-evaluate her relationship not only to the family but also the house itself. The discovery of the old man’s secret means she “couldn’t undo the knowledge” (p.52) and all that the old man’s house represents has been corrupted by his past. (Link Sentence back to Topic) Learning the truth for Marina of the old man’s past causes her to re-evaluate her relationship with him, her naivety now seeming ‘wilful’ (p.52)

Conclusion / Message of Author

In her short story collection Hadley explores the theme of secrecy and its destructive impact on relationships and the need to find a balance between openness and privacy. Through Hadley’s proleptic transitions in time, the experiences and their significance are underscored through the use of potent symbolism in her stories that suggest, like the title of the collection ‘Bad Dreams’, that various nightmares or unfulfilled dreams are experienced by children and women in the stories. Ultimately, Hadley depicts how the character’s secrets lead to a loss of trust and eventually the unravelling of their relationships.

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This Resource is for students studying Year 12 English in the Victorian VCE Curriculum Unit 3 Creating Texts to help you pick a protest issue.

PROTEST FRAMEWORK ISSUES
SOCIAL ISSUES	TANGIBLE ISSUES	WAR	DOMESTIC ISSUES	INTERNATIONAL ISSUES
Racism in general	Domestic violence	Revolutions – the fight for liberty, equality, and freedom	Australian government programs & spending	Foreign policy
First Nations people racism & inequality	Hate speech	Israel versus Palestine conflict	Anti-immigration	World powers
Racism in sport	Gun violence and laws	Russia versus Ukraine conflict	Economy and cost of living crisis	Forms of government communism versus democracy
Antisemitism	Climate change	Iranians against the Khamenei regime	Referendums success and failures	Pro-democracy for political freedom to end political corruption & injustice
Bullying	Fast fashion	Asylum seekers	Media bias	Press ownership and censorship
Women’s rights, women’s equality & women’s suffrage	Food insecurity and famines	Humanitarian aid	Prison reform	Capitalism and financial equality fairness – Occupy Wall Street protest not just for the 1% but for the 99%
LGBTQ+ rights	Terrorism	Peace & ceasefires	First Nations people deaths in custody	Fake news
Sexual liberation	Youth violence	Oppression by countries against their own people	First Nations people close the gap	GenZ’s against corruption and economic instability of US President Trump
Disability rights	Homelessness	Displacement and deportation of illegal immigrants	First Nations people stolen generation	Anti-ICE immigration protests in USA against President Trump
Cultural appropriation and multimedia			First Nations people Day of Mourning – change Australia day date – Invasion Day
Cancel culture			First Nations People truth, treaty & sovereignty
Addiction and drug use			GenZ’s against corruption and economic instability of Australian Government
Education – free education and fight for equality to educate everyone
Mental health

Consider protest groups you select – their elements of protest = the spark/nucleus – the purpose – the form – the obstacles – the price paid – the achievements and outcomes – the failures and why

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This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian VCE Curriculum Unit 4 who are about to undergo an Oral Presentation Speech.

All persuasive texts (whether a letter to the editor, a speech, an essay, an opinion article, or an editorial) follow the same basic structure

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This Resource is for students in Year 12 in the VCE 3&4 English Curriculum writing for the SAC and Section B in the Exam on the Framework ‘PLAY’

What is Writing about Play?

Writing about play is a framework that looks at the exciting and wide range ideas about how play transcends the boundaries of age, culture, language, and time. It can be relevant to anything from games and sports to acting and the creating of literature, musical works, and images. Exploring the idea of play you can discover the variety of ways it is used as a form of self-expression and exploration. Play enables individuals to experiment with different roles, emotions, and behaviours in a controlled environment.

Play and Imaginative Play Ideas

Stories about imaginative play often involve children transforming everyday objects into magical worlds, like a cardboard box becoming a spaceship or a backyard fort turning into a castle, which depict children using their imaginations to have adventures and solve problems.

I hope these play ideas give you inspiration to create your writing piece for the SAC and Section B in the English Exam.

How stories inspire imaginative play

• Transforming the ordinary: Stories show how a simple object, like a box or a stick, can become a tool for adventure.
• Role-playing: Familiar tales like Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs allow children to act out different characters and scenarios.
• Encouraging creativity: Books that highlight the creative process, like What If…? and Beautiful Oops!, give children permission to be messy and explore their own ideas.
• Creating new worlds: Stories demonstrate how to build elaborate fictional settings and worlds through imagination.

Books that inspire imaginative play

Alice in Wonderland: by Lewis Carroll: The story follows a young girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world filled with bizarre, anthropomorphic creatures and surreal adventures, such as a Mad Hatter’s tea party and a nonsensical game of croquet with the Queen of Hearts. The story is known for its literary nonsense, wordplay, and memorable characters like the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit.

The Lion. The Witch and the Wardrobe: by C.S. Lewis: One day Lucy finds a wardrobe that transports her to Narnia. Once a peaceful realm filled with talking animals, fauns, Giants, and dwarves that is now under a cursed eternal winter by the villainous White Witch. With aid from the majestic lion Aslan, the Lucy, her brothers, and sister lead Narnia into an all-out war as they fight to outwit the Witch and restore peace to the land.

Games that inspire imaginative play

Jumanji Board Game: bring the adventure to life with Jumanji the Board Game. Players and a band of brave adventurers suddenly find themselves deep in a mysterious jungle full of secrets and surprises. Danger lies along your path, threatening to take away your 3 precious Life Tokens. Your goal is to reach Jumanji (the centre) and call out its name.

Films that inspire imaginative play

Jumanji the Film Version: The “Jumanji” films explore several themes related to play and imagination, including:

1. Adventure and Escapism: The Jumanji games transport characters into thrilling, fantastical worlds, allowing them to escape their everyday lives and embark on extraordinary adventures.
2. Teamwork and Friendship: Characters must work together to overcome challenges, highlighting the importance of collaboration and support in achieving goals.
3. Personal Growth: Throughout their journey, characters often face personal fears and insecurities, leading to significant character development and self-discovery.
4. Confronting Consequences: The game imposes real-life consequences for actions taken within it, emphasizing the idea that play can have serious implications and teaches responsibility.
5. The Power of Imagination: The films celebrate creativity and the freedom of imagination, showcasing how games can bring people together and inspire them to think outside the box.

These themes intertwine to create a narrative that is both entertaining and meaningful, engaging audiences while encouraging deeper reflection on play and creativity.

Writing a Short Story Based on Jumanji

Writing an imaginative story inspired by playing a game like “Jumanji” by crafting your own adventure:

Step 1: Create Your Setting

• Choose a Theme: Decide on the overall theme of your story. It could be jungle adventure, outer space, medieval fantasy, or even a whimsical land.
• Describe the Game: Imagine a mysterious board game similar to Jumanji. What does it look like? What are the rules? What unique elements does it have (e.g., magical creatures, traps, helpful items)?

Step 2: Introduce Your Characters

• Main Characters: Develop a few main characters who will play the game. They can be friends, siblings, or even strangers who come together for the adventure.
• Unique Traits: Give each character distinct personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. This diversity will enrich the story and create dynamics during gameplay.

Step 3: Set the Scene

• Discovering the Game: Decide how the characters come across the game. Is it found in an attic, gifted by a mysterious stranger, or discovered on a beach?
• Initial Reactions: Describe their feelings about the game. Are they excited, scared, or sceptical? This reaction sets the tone for the adventure.

Step 4: Start Playing

• Game Begins: Have the characters start playing the game. Describe the first roll of the dice and what happens next. What unexpected challenges do they face?
• Introduce Elements of Gameplay: Include imaginative aspects, such as drawing cards that present quests or encountering fantastical creatures that impact the game.

Step 5: Develop the Adventure

• Encounters and Challenges: Create a series of challenges the characters must face. They could solve riddles, navigate obstacles, or battle mythical creatures.
• Teamwork and Growth: Emphasize how the characters work together to overcome obstacles, highlighting their growth, learning, and developing friendships along the way.

Step 6: Introduce a Conflict

• Rising Tension: Introduce a significant challenge or conflict as the game progresses. Perhaps a powerful antagonist appears or the game itself becomes more dangerous.
• Character Development: Show how characters must confront their fears or insecurities to succeed, providing a deeper emotional layer to the story.

Step 7: Climax and Resolution

• Climactic Moment: Build up to a thrilling climax where the characters must use everything they’ve learned and the bonds they’ve formed to overcome the final challenge.
• Winning the Game: Describe their victory and the rewards they receive. It could be a lesson learned, a magical gift, or simply a return home.

Step 8: Conclusion

• Returning to Reality: Explain how the characters return to the real world. Do they reflect on what they experienced during the game? How has it changed them?
• Open-Ended Thoughts: Optionally, leave the story open-ended with a hint that the adventure may continue or that there are more mysteries to explore.

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This Resource is for Year 12 students studying Yoko Ogawa’s ‘The Memory Police’ in the VCE Victorian Curriculum for Unit 3 AOS1 Reading and Responding to Texts.

Introduction

Yoko Ogawa’s ‘The Memory Police’ is a dreamlike exploration of the role of memory in creating and sustaining cultural identities. Set on an unnamed, untethered island, the novel chronicles the work of the omnipresent Memory Police in slowly and deliberately destroying the memories, and eventually the very personhood, of the island’s residents.

It is a dystopian novel with an unnamed young novelist where mundane objects like ribbons, hats, perfume, books and memories are vanishing mysteriously. Then nature inexplicably disappears like roses, birds and more worryingly, people are taken away and body parts stop working. The ruthlessly efficient Memory Police (totalitarian agency) offer no explanation for their actions, and the islanders ask no questions. There is an inevitability to their work, as explained by the unnamed narrator’s flashbacks to her childhood, and the disappearances that have marked every major occasion in her life. The behaviour of the Memory Police is rendered sinister by the fact that readers are not given an insight into the why of their actions; it is all that residents and readers alike can do to infer the logic behind the erosion of life on the island. The apocalyptic atmosphere of the island, the frightened people, the misery of a fragmented community and disappearing traces of a free world are clearly portrayed in the story.

Despite the Memory Police giving the appearance of being able to exert total power, there still remain ways to counter them. The unnamed narrator works methodically with her major ally, known only as ‘the old man’, to provide the only resistance they can imagine – hiding the narrator’s editor, R, who is one of a small number of people who retain the capacity to access their memories, despite the disappearances. The narrator draws inspiration from like-minded souls operating in secret across the island, hiding individuals and, in some cases, whole families from the Memory Police. This hugely risky undertaking is not the only way that the narrator appears to challenge and resist the edicts of the Memory Police. She works with R to finish a novel, even after novels have been disappeared. The three close friends spend much of the text reflecting on the relationship between memory and the soul, but they spend little time explicitly discussing what appears to be one of Yoko Ogawa’s major concerns: the power of art to provide resistance in times of political conservatism.

Genre & Structure of the Text

First published in 1994 in Japan and translated by Stephen Snyder in 2019, the novel is a first-person narrative that addresses issues of loss of individualism under a totalitarian regime as the theme of this allegorical text. Critics have situated Ogawa’s work within a literary canon of speculative, science and dystopian fiction that concerns itself with efforts to rewrite and reshape history to support the efforts of authoritarian rulers. Her work can also be considered magic realism, as the characters are subject to phenomena that challenge a reader’s understanding of the laws of nature. The cumulative effect of these surreal events adds a mystical, fablelike feel to the text, while offering a warning for contemporary audiences about what their world may yet become.

Nestled within this largely chronological structure are a series of flashbacks that allow the reader to develop a sense of what life looked like for the narrator prior to the death of her parents. These flashbacks serve to underscore the significance of the narrator’s developing understanding of the form and function of the Memory Police. As an adult she is able to reimagine her memories of childhood, often under R’s guidance. These flashbacks thus serve a dual purpose: they offer insight into how the narrator came to be, whilst also foreshadowing the seemingly unstoppable march towards the erosion of everything that once made the island a functional society.

The text includes a novel-within-the-novel. In The Memory Police, the narrator’s preoccupation with her own work again serves to foreshadow her understanding of what is happening to the world around her, whilst also affording her an agency that she is denied in her day-to-day life. Her profession, and the reader’s access to her work, also acts as a reflection on the role of the arts and artists in both documenting and reflecting on the major historical and political events of their times.

Perspective of the Text

The Memory Police asks readers to consider the role of power, memory, and history in contemporary society. Ogawa’s world is the logical extension of the work undertaken by conservative governments worldwide, where history is written and rewritten to serve dominant narratives about war, government, and economics. Written at a time when Japanese society was still wrestling with the demons of World War Two, Ogawa’s work renewed conversations around Japan’s role in the war and its atrocities committed by the Japanese empire in its forced colonisation of the Asian mainland and other countries in the Pacific. A common refrain Japan has used as a nation is to sidestep responsibility for wartime acts and to forget in order to be disconnected from the past like Ogawa’s novel. The novel’s explicit discussion of the way that memory and storytelling can be weaponised to target minorities and empower ruling parties contributes to reader understanding of some of the philosophical questions that have arisen in response to many of the most complex moments in recent human history.

The Memory Police and Echoes of Nazi Germany

It is impossible to ignore the echoes of Nazi Germany and the treatment of Jewish people that Ogawa draws on, especially regarding the Memory Police themselves like the SS and the loaded imagery of the hidden enclave the narrator builds in her home to hide R which is similar to ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’. Ogawa took inspiration from the secret hidden annex in Amsterdam where German Jewish girl Anne Frank and her family hid for over 2 years from the Nazi’s during WWII.

In March 1944, Anne wrote in her diary, “The brightest spot of all is that at least I can write down my thoughts and feelings; otherwise, I would be absolutely stifled.” In August of that year, the inhabitants of the annex were captured by the SS. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945, just two months before liberation. She was fifteen years old.

Many elements of Anne Frank’s life in hiding are incorporated into The Memory Police. “Anne’s heart and mind were so rich,” commented Ogawa in a conversation with Motoko Rich. “Her diary proved that people can grow even in such a confined situation. And writing could give people freedom… I wanted to digest Anne’s experience in my own way and then recompose it into my work.”

Chapter Summaries.

Chapter 1             The narrator remembers her mother, who kept her memories. She establishes a central tension of the text: the ever-widening gap between those who remember and those who forget.

Chapter 2             Birds disappear – a particularly painful and personal disappearance for the narrator, whose father was an ornithologist. The Memory Police arrive to search her house.

Chapter 3             The narrator explains her work as a novelist, and her artistic preoccupation with that which ‘had been disappeared’ (p. 15). The reader is introduced to the old man.

Chapter 4             En route to her publisher, the narrator encounters the Memory Police. She meets with R, her editor.

Chapter 5             The narrator works on a novel wherein the protagonist is a typist loses her voice. Professor Inui and his family flee their home after receiving a summons from the Memory Police – just as it had happened to her mother.

Chapter 6             The typist experiences a flashback to her own childhood. The narrator continues to work with R, and she worries for the safety of the Inui family. Roses disappear.

Chapter 7             The narrator visits the old man, and they discuss the impact of the continued disappearances on life on the island.

Chapter 8             The relationship between the typist and her teacher deepens. The narrator shows R around her home, and she discovers that he is able to retain all of his memories, despite the disappearances.

Chapter 9             Winter descends on the island, and the Memory Police strengthen their grip on the community. The narrator discloses R’s secret to the old man, and they begin a plan to hide R in the narrator’s home.

Chapter 10          R agrees to take up residence in the narrator’s house.

Chapter 11          R and the narrator become increasingly intimate. They discuss R’s experience with memory. The narrator works with a replacement editor, and the old man makes contact with R’s wife.

Chapter 12          In the narrator’s novel, the typist and her teacher grow closer as he gives her a private lesson. R seeks work of any kind to ward off feelings of uselessness and depression as his world becomes ever smaller. Two new disappearances sweep the island: ‘first, photographs, and then fruits of all sorts’ (p. 94).

Chapter 13          The old man is taken into custody. R tries to reassure the narrator, and they continue to discuss the nature of memory, and the ways that the outside world is changing without him.

Chapter 14          The old man is released from custody, revealing that he was suspected of being involved in a smuggling operation. R’s baby is born, and he continues to adapt to life in hiding.

Chapter 15          Tension increases in the narrator’s novel, as the teacher renders his student voiceless. The Memory Police now focus on eliminating calendars; the worst effect of this particular disappearance is the trapping of residents on the island in a perpetual winter.

Chapter 16          R and the narrator organise a celebration for the old man’s birthday. R gifts the old man an orugōru (pp. 145-146), a long disappeared traditional music box. The celebration is cut short by a visit from the Memory Police.

Chapter 17          The Memory Police search the narrator’s home. She fears that they are looking for R, but it becomes clear that their visit was motivated by a raid on her neighbours’ safe room. R comforts the narrator after the raid.

Chapter 18          The typist feels a growing disconnect between her soul and her body. The narrator’s life contracts further as she tries to limit actions that might result in drawing the attention of the Memory Police to her and to her home. She furtively listens to R bathe, aware of the uneasy intimacy between them.

Chapter 19          The narrator is asked for help by an old woman, who appears to be seeking refuge from the Memory Police. Novels are the next significant item to be disappeared, which sharpens R’s sense of urgency to help restore some of the narrator’s memories. The narrator adopts her neighbours’ abandoned dog, Don.

Chapter 20          After the disappearing of novels, in order to earn a living, the narrator takes a job as a typist. R continues to try to activate the narrator’s memories. This effort feels futile to the narrator and the old man. The narrator realises that she is in love with R. An earthquake strikes.

Chapter 21          The narrator and the old man narrowly escape the earthquake and the resultant tsunami. They find R safe, but the narrator’s home, including the safe room is badly damaged.

Chapter 22          The old man comes to live with the narrator. They discover that the narrator’s mother had found a way to use her art to retain disappeared items by hiding these inside her sculptures. R furthers his efforts to awaken the narrator’s soul.

Chapter 23          The narrator and the old man venture to her mother’s cabin in search of additional disappeared items. On their way home, they narrowly escape being searched by the Memory Police.

Chapter 24          The old man contemplates the changes in his life. His imminent death is foreshadowed as he begins to struggle physically with everyday tasks.

Chapter 25          The narrator recovers the old man’s body. After his funeral, she feels increasingly lonely and disconnected. A new disappearance signals a new phase for the island’s residents, as they find themselves without the use of their left legs.

Chapter 26          The narrator re-establishes contact with R’s wife. Another body part disappears – the right arm. The narrator becomes increasingly reconciled to her own inevitable disappearance; however, R maintains that he will be able to shield her from this fate.

Chapter 27          This chapter is an entire extract from the narrator’s novel. It has been written at great effort under R’s instruction. It chronicles the last minutes of the typist’s life as she is completely absorbed into her teacher’s room.

Chapter 28          The narrator details the disappearance of the island’s inhabitants. She encourages R to make his way back in the world, leaving her alone, disembodied and without a voice, in what was once his secret room.

Characters

Unnamed narrator           Ogawa’s narrator is the reader’s set of eyes on the island. She is unnamed, and the reader is not provided with much detail about her physical attributes. Despite this lack of conventional information, the reader’s most intimate relationship is with the narrator, who tells the story in the first person. The narrator is a novelist, compelled to tell the story of things that disappear, we see the world through her eyes, but we are intimately aware that she is slowly, but forcibly, losing her memory.

Narrator’s mother            The narrator’s mother was a sculptor who worked skilfully before her untimely death, to retain her memories. The text opens with the narrator reminiscing about her mother’s attempts to preserve memories in her daughter, and in her art. Her death, whilst in the custody of the Memory Police, acts as a warning sign for those closest to the narrator about the power of these law enforcers. The narrator’s mother acts a guiding force for the narrator, her drive to preserve that which was disappeared seemingly acting as a formative experience for the narrator.

Narrator’s father               The narrator’s father was an ornithologist. He, like the narrator, lost his memories as intended by the Memory Police. Ogawa’s references to his work provide a rhythm within the novel; every time that the narrator encounters physical reminders of her father and his life’s endeavours, she reconnects pieces of her life, and builds on the memories that she is able to awaken with R’s assistance.

The old man       The old man is a constant in the narrator’s life. The two are connected through the nurse who raised the narrator – he was the nurse’s husband. The old man provides a kind of practical support that seems to tether both the narrator and the narrative itself to something concrete. Every time that the narrator appears to be losing her sense of confidence and her will, he responds with a kind pragmatism.

R             R is one of the few people in the narrator’s life that she trusts. Their desires are inextricably connected, as they work painstakingly together on appraising and editing each word and line of her novels. By the very nature of their shared work, the relationship between the narrator and her editor is close, and yet it still seems surprising when R declares his secret to her, in her basement. He appears to be emboldened by the revelation about the narrator’s mother’s determination to remember and to record reality, and their relationship quickly deepens.

Professor Inui and family               Professor Inui and his family connect the narrator to her mother. Helping them as they escape is the narrator’s first effort to actively resist the Memory Police.

Don        The narrator’s anxiety levels rise when her neighbours are taken away by the Memory Police. Unexpectedly but also unsurprisingly, the narrator takes their dog, Don, into her home. The dog, too, acts as a steadying presence in the narrator’s life, giving her another tether to the visceral, mortal realm. Don also acts to triangulate the reader’s experience of Ogawa’s world, revealing how the wishes of the Memory Police organise life for all living beings on the island.

The Memory Police          The Memory Police are rendered as a brutal, cruel, and professional unit. They operate as a group, giving civilians on the island little opportunity to negotiate their treatment. They generate fear, working from both their reputation and their highly visible actions. They act as enforcers, but readers do not know for whom – the Memory Police are the only face of authority that we see. This works to enhance the reader’s understanding of their menacing quality, but also raises questions about the rationale behind this seemingly totalitarian power.

The typist in the novel-within-a-novel     The narrator’s construction of the typist character provides important insight into her own daily concerns. The typist is rendered mute early in the novel, but ‘was continually struggling to speak’ (p. 55). She initially does not want to accept her fate, but feels ‘increasingly oppressed, as though [she] were being backed into the corner by a powerful force’ (p. 91).

The teacher in the novel-within-a-novel                 The typist’s teacher is a domineering figure, who manipulates and entraps his students. He acts as an enforcer, but positions himself as a protector.

Neighbours         There is a small cast of neighbours and townspeople operating in the background of the narrator’s life. These minor characters act to reinforce the degree of risk that the narrator and the old man are undertaking. They are subject to forces that the narrator will have to encounter.

THEMES
memory	connection	craft of writing
art	alienation	totalitarian police state
loss	isolation	identity
surveillance	storytelling	creation vs destruction
tyranny	fate vs free will	longevity
defiance	censorship	resistance
forgetting & disconnection from the past & history	power	cultural identities

SYMBOLS
hearts	snow	hands
food	memories	birds
disappearances	narrator’s novel	typist in the novel
Memory Police	book burning	the protagonist narrator
roses & rose garden	the weather

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum

This resource is for Year 12 students studying the new text ‘Regeneration’ by Pat Barker in the VCE English Mainstream Curriculum for 2026.

Introduction

Pat Barker’s 1991 novel ‘Regeneration’ is the first in Barker’s trilogy of the same name, with subsequent novels ‘The Eye in the Door’ (1993) and ‘The Ghost Road’ (1995). Classified as a historical novel, in that it attempts to realistically depict life in 1917, when the First World War was still at its height. Not only is it full of period detail, but it also features fictional versions of real people – the psychiatrists W.H.R. Rivers and Lewis Yealland, the scientist Henry Head and the war poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, are all historical figures, and many scenes in the novel are based upon actual incidents recorded by them in memoirs and letters. However, it can be difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in this book as it also includes invented fictional characters such as working-class officer Billy Prior and the munitions worker Sarah Lumb, as well as figures who could be described as ‘historical extrapolations’ – mainly fictional, but with a basis in fact. These include River’s patient David Burns and Yealland’s patient Callan, both of whom appear an anonymous studies in these doctor’s published case-notes. The intersecting stories of the patients of Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart War Hospital during World War I offer insight into the breadth and complexity of mentally traumatised soldiers due to shell-shock from months and years endured fighting in the trenches of the Western Front in Belgium and France. Barker places the action in a hospital set up for the treatment of these shell-shocked officers in a compassionate yet unrelentingly direct exploration of their fraught psychological experiences following warfare.

Structure of the novel

The novel’s central figure is Captain William Halse Rivers, a Medical Officer, neurologist, and former anthropologist. The novel charts the four months from July 1917 to 26 November 1917, the dates on which Siegfried Sassoon is admitted and discharged, respectively, from Craiglockhart. The novel opens with Sassoon’s ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’ and closes with his official discharge from the hospital, his stance being a firm ‘refusal to recant’. Through her account of these four months, Barker presents an array of patients, all of whom suffer neuroses as a result of their traumatic experiences at war. In using Sassoon’s ‘Declaration’ as a dominant narrative focus, as well as imagined conversations between the two respected war poets Sassoon and Owen, Barker’s story extends their unflinching reports of the realities of war that were usually hidden from society.

The novel is divided into four parts, with each broadly covering a month of Sassoon’s stay, although Part Four includes October and November. Though initially admitted for a twelve week stay, Sassoon must stay an additional month after he ‘deliberately skipped the Board’.

Part One = After Sassoon’s ‘Declaration’ retains a tight focus on the staff and patients of Craiglockhart with particular emphasis on Captain William Halse Rivers and his dealings with his patients.

Part Two = Readers are introduced to Sarah Lumb and her friends working at a munitions factory with discussions of women’s lives changed by war. Sarah’s interaction with Billy Prior reveals the traumas of the soldiers and those people at home who are not informed of the truth about the experiences and brutalities of the war.

Part Three = Follows Rivers on his 3 weeks leave and his perspective on the war and patient treatment.

Part Four = Presents a broad consideration of societal and gendered positions on the war. Rivers leaves Craiglockhart for the Royal Flying Corp Central Hospital and explores the variance in treatment for neurological disordered in the UK at that time.

Third-person narrative voice

Barker’s novel is presented through a third-person narrative voice, with focalisation shared between a variety of characters, predominantly Rivers, Sassoon, and Prior. This means that, as well as following a largely linear narrative structure, with momentary diversions to memories or dreams, there are multiple, concurrent narrative perspectives and timelines shared. In this way, Barker permits a variety of competing perspectives on the war, the suffering of soldiers, living standards and societal values to be revealed.

The title ‘Regeneration’ as a multi-layered symbol

The title functions as a central, multi-layered symbol that refers to various forms of physical, mental, and moral healing and change during WWI. The novel explores how different characters undergo “regeneration,” highlighting the tension between restoring soldiers’ health and the moral implications of sending them back to war. The symbolism of “regeneration” operates on several levels:

• Physical Healing and Nerve Regeneration: The term is first introduced in a literal, scientific context, referring to real-life experiments Dr. Rivers and his colleague Henry Head conducted on nerve regrowth (they severed and re-sutured a human nerve to study its healing). This physical process of the body healing itself serves as a metaphor for the psychological healing the shell-shocked soldiers in the novel desperately need.
• Mental and Emotional Recovery: In the context of Craiglockhart War Hospital, “regeneration” symbolizes the process of restoring the soldiers’ shattered minds and “nerves” through compassionate talk therapy and psychoanalysis. The goal is to help them overcome trauma, mutism, and amnesia by confronting their suppressed memories and emotions. This is a difficult, often painful, process that forces men to challenge traditional notions of stoic masculinity.
• Moral and Ethical Conflict: The most profound symbolic meaning involves the moral dilemma of the “regeneration” being sought: the soldiers are “healed” not for their own well-being, but so they can be sent back to the front to fight and potentially die. This forced return to combat is a form of control, which Rivers comes to question through his interactions with the pacifist Siegfried Sassoon. The process is thus presented as both a compassionate act of healing and a morally compromised act of reinforcing an unjust war machine.
• Personal Change for Dr. Rivers: Rivers himself undergoes a form of “regeneration”. Through observing his patients and engaging in conversations with Sassoon, he is forced to question his deeply held beliefs about duty, masculinity, and the societal acceptance of the war. His internal transformation parallels the physical and psychological changes in his patients, demonstrating that the process of questioning the war’s purpose affects everyone involved, not just the soldiers on the front line. 

Ultimately, the symbol of “regeneration” is ambiguous, representing both the potential for positive change and growth, and the problematic, state-mandated goal of simply restoring men to functional military service, no matter the psychological or ethical cost.

Perspective of the text

Barker subverts expectations of war fiction by presenting the psychological suffering experienced as an aftermath of war, instead of from direct life on the front. In relating the brutal physical endurance and horror of trench warfare through war neuroses, Barker is able to humanise these experiences. The brutal depictions of war that Barker does include throughout the novel are mostly related through the conversations, hallucinations, memories, and dreams of the patients. Presented through this lens, Barker is able to underscore them with an authenticity and emotional resonance that only serves to make the depictions of the true human cost, despite physical survival, all the more confronting.

Central paradox of men and masculinity in war

Barker’s focus on WWI and men but also masculinity of being a man in a social and cultural construct allows her to stress a central paradox in the novel that war is meant to be the most manly of activities, but the particular conditions of the war fought in the trenches made soldiers more like women than men. For Barker, this becomes crystallised in the image of the shell-shocked soldier, who becomes so mentally traumatised with fear and horror, that he breaks down and is unable to continue to fight. Prior to WWI, hysteria was believed to be a female complaint, so when men began to suffer from it their behaviour could only be seen as ‘feminine’. However, in Craiglockhart, Barker brings the theme of masculine crisis to the forefront of her text. Consequently, the novel features male characters who feel themselves to be, one way or another, not ‘proper men’, a concern often expressed through themes of sexual inadequacy or deviation. Several of the main characters – Siegfried Sassoon, Wildred Owen, and Robert Graves – are homosexual. Only the fictional character of Billy Prior appears to be heterosexual and has relationship with a female partner, although weakened by chronic asthma and plagued by nightmares, he still believes that he has somehow failed as a man.

Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration’

Sassoon’s ‘Declaration’ is a powerful public statement of anti-war sentiment in which he denounces the continuation of WWI as unjust and a deliberate act of the government, not a necessary defence, and refuses to return to the front line as a protest on behalf of the common soldier. Issued in July 1917, Sassoon’s deliberate defiance of military authority he hoped would lead to a court-martial, thereby creating publicity for his anti-war views and turn the public against the war. The military wanted to avoid a potentially embarrassing public trial and with his friend Robert Graves, convinced them to admit Sassoon to Craiglockhart as suffering from shell-shock, thereby making him medically unfit to serve. The ‘Declaration’ in essence was Sassoon’s defiance that he considered the war had lost its moral justification and had become a senseless waste of life. He maintained that the civilian complacency and detached political establishment prolonged the war, but disregarded the true horrors and agonies faced by the soldiers.

Dr Rivers confronts the central paradox of his work

Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Declaration’ forces Dr. Rivers to confront the central paradox of his work: his duty as a military doctor to heal soldiers in order to send them back to the senseless horrors of a war he personally comes to believe is unjust. Initially, Rivers holds a conventional view of the war, believing it is a necessary conflict that must be seen through to the end to stop German militarism. Rivers, a man with a Victorian upbringing and respect for authority, believes that putting on the uniform entails a contract of loyalty and that one cannot simply change one’s mind. His job at Craiglockhart War Hospital is to treat the mental and physical trauma of shell shock and return the men to the front as “fit for duty”. Rivers quickly determines that Sassoon is not mentally ill, but rather a rational man making a moral choice. This fact, combined with Sassoon’s articulate and passionate arguments, challenges Rivers’ professional and personal convictions. By the end of the novel, Rivers is a changed man, his view has fundamentally shifted from one of duty and resignation to a profound, if private, anti-war sentiment, directly influenced by Sassoon’s ‘Declaration’ and moral clarity.

THEMES
War, duty, loyalty, waging war for power, war’s dehumanisation & anti-war protest	Trauma, shell-shock & mental illness of war	Masculinity & emasculation, defining manliness & male bonds & comradeship
Male vs female roles, experiences & expectations in war & societal constraints	Regeneration	Identity, sanity & madness
Alienation & belonging	Poetry as therapy & anti-war protest	Dreams
The role of the psychiatrist	Conscience and principle	Heterosexual and homosexual relationships, sexuality & identity
Father/son relationships and conflict	Nature & the outdoors	Healing and the nature of it
Empathy & care	Transformation	Speech and silence
River’s perspective & duty	Psychoanalysis, traditional medicine vs electric shock treatment	Class and gender dynamics

SYMBOLS & MOTIFS
Regeneration	Mutism & stammering	Physical and mental wounds
Trenches, mud, No Man’s Land	Horses bit, Church window, Hymn 373 & chickens on Charles farm	Yellow & chrysanthemum flowers
Psychological treatment, impact of Freud, sanity vs insanity	Billy Prior’s asthma & inability to conform to strong man ideal	Siegfried’s German name
Transformation & healing & change & rotting caterpillar	Emasculation	Class, snobbery, dynamics in society & in the army
Women at war & role of Medusa	Speech & silence	Craiglockhart Hospital as a setting & barbed wire on the beach at Suffolk Coast & cod heads & sound of the maroon & the lifeboat & circular tower building with a moat
Poetry & power of writing	Old men & civilians at home	Nurturing & care & female vs male caring

MAIN CHARACTERS
Medical Officers at Craiglockhart	Rivers / Bryce / Ruggles / Brock / MacIntyre
Others in authority at Craiglockhart	Patterson – Head of Office Administration / Major Paget – external member of the Board / Major Huntley – member of the Board / Colonel Balfour Graham – succeeds Bryce as CO of Craiglockhart / Sisters Duffy & Rogers
Patients at Craiglockhart (main characters)	Seigfried Sassoon / David Burns / Billy Prior / Wilfred Owen
Other patients at Craiglockhart	Campbell / Fothersgill / Ralph Anderson / Robinson / Broadbent / Willard / Landsdowne / Pugh / Thorpe
Other characters	Robert Graves / Henry & Ruth Head / Charles & Bertha / Sarah Lumb / Ada Lumb / Lizzie / Madge / Betty / Old Clegg / Dr Yealland at Queen Square / Callan patient of Dr Yealland

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian VCE Curriculum 2026