Dramatic irony in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex Oedipus Rex is a Greek tragedy written by Sophocles. Sophocles, knowing that his audience is aware of the outcome of the play, uses that knowledge to create various situations in which dramatic irony plays a key role. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows the tragic truth before the characters do. Through his use of irony Sophocles manages to avoid telling an old story, although the audience is aware of the end of the story, they are intrigued by the irony present in the story. Sophocles made generous use of irony. In this way he teased the viewer into wanting to see how the events that occurred later would mentally affect the main character, in this case Oedipus. Oedipus is confident, intelligent and strong-willed. Paradoxically, these are precisely the traits that determine his tragic discovery. Thanks to these characteristics Oedipus was able to solve the riddle given... in the middle of the paper... he attempted to show examples of dramatic irony and how they apply to the plot of the play. I really liked "Oedipus the King" because of the style used by Sophocles and because I normally like tragedies like this. I believe that tragedies make you question every aspect of life, which would explain why many of the plays were written in this time period. This comedy lived up to its expectations and I look forward to seeing more dramatic irony in this form in the future.