Chapter 4 offers a case study of productions and new versions of Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus from the 1970s to the present that adopt the play as a vehicle to explore human origins, heroism, leadership, social corruption and pollution, identity, and parental abandonment of children. The play has served to focus American resistance to forces that overdetermine human choice and action, including psychological forces explored by Freud and others. New versions can also augment the role of Jocasta or create new Theban trilogies by pairing the play with Sophocles's Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus.

Chapter 4 offers a case study of productions and new versions of Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus from the 1970s to the present that adopt the play as a vehicle to explore human origins, heroism, leadership, social corruption and pollution, identity, and parental abandonment of children. The play has served to focus American resistance to forces that overdetermine human choice and action, including psychological forces explored by Freud and others. New versions can also augment the role of Jocasta or create new Theban trilogies by pairing the play with Sophocles's Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus.