Oedipus is about the act of figuring out what Oedipus is about

Summary

Ok spoilers ahead. But Oedipus Rex a.k.a. Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles is almost 2,500 years old at this point so it’s fair game imo. The Oedipus story in a nutshell: Oedipus, who was secretly adopted, receives a prophecy that he will kill his dad. So to thwart fate he leaves his dad and winds up in a city with a missing king (btw killing an argumentative guy on the way). Many years after becoming the new king and marrying the widow, he discovers that the dude he long-ago killed on the road was the missing king. Uh oh. And that the missing king was actually his birth dad, prophecy fulfilled. Double uh oh. And that his now-wife is therefore his birth mom. Uh oh for the third time, wife/mom suicides, stabs out own eyes, exiles self. End. So the Sophocles play is a re-telling of this already well-worn story, at a time when Athenian culture was oriented around annual drama competitions (it came second). The narrative new spin on the old tale is that it’s told as a whodunnit set over a single day, sunrise to sunset. In a combination of flashbacks and new action, Oedipus himself acts as detective solving the mystery of the old king’s murder. We’re already well into Oedipus’ reign of Thebes at the moment of the play, so his arrival is all backstory, then it’s tragic revelation after tragic revelation as his investigations bear fruit, and– Oedipus discovers the identity of the mysterious murderer, and it’s him. What a twist! I mean, this is “he was dead all along” levels of whoa, right? So I’ve been trying to think of other whodunnits in which the detective finds out that they themselves are the killer. I can only think of one and a half, plus one I’m not sure about? SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS So there’s Fight Club (1999) which, if you see it as a whodunnit in which the protagonist is trying to catch up with Tyler Durden, they discover that yes indeed etc A clearer fit is Angel Heart (1987) in which Mickey Rourke plays PI Harry Angel who is commissioned by Robert De Niro t...