What is a summary of 'Oedipus Rex'?

Answer 1

That Oedipus must solve a municipal problem that turns into a tragic issue of mistaken identity and that leads to personal and professional misfortune is a summary of "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. - 405 B.C.E.).

Specifically, Theban King Oedipus is presented with the problem of ending the pestilence before it ends all life in Thebes. He is informed through the Apolline oracle that the city's problems will end with the identification and punishment of the guilty in the unsolved murder of Oedipus' royal predecessor, King Laius. In the course of the murder investigation, Oedipus discovers from his royal advisor, Teiresias the blind prophet, that he himself is the prime suspect. Despite his misgivings, Oedipus directs the investigation toward the crime scene, which turns out to be the very location of his own crime of about the same time against a person of about the same appearance as Laius. He comes to the realization that he is Laius' killer and that the dreadful prophecy that sends him running from Corinth to Delphi to Thebes is a true prediction: He therefore is father's killer and his mother's husband.