The Role of Characters in Oedipus the KingCharacters play a very important role in the play "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles. Without characters, the work would lack a certain dimension and would be very difficult to read. The presence of characters in the play makes it more easily understandable. If the characters did not appear in the play it would be almost impossible to understand it since everything that happens happens through the words of the characters. Furthermore, if there were no characters the outcome of the play would be different. The significance of the characters in the play is very obvious. Without them the show would be much shorter and much more boring. The role of the characters is very important for the work. The characters make the work possible simply by virtue of their existence. If they didn't exist, the show wouldn't exist either. If the play didn't exist, the characters wouldn't exist either. The characters and the work are codependent and must have a symbiotic relationship to ensure their mutual survival. The lack of characters in the work would make it very difficult to read and perhaps even more difficult to watch. A lack of characters would require the use of some other device, and no substitute has been found to replace the role that characters play in a play. An example from the play is when Oedipus spoke to Teiresias: "Then I knew not that you would speak like a fool, it would be a long time before I called you." If there were no characters in this play, this could not have happened. If the play had no characters the result would be very different. All the actions and conversations could not have taken place without the use of characters. The characters made the work and its tragedy possible. Without characters nothing could have happened. They allowed Oedipus to kill his father and have sex with his mother and for everything bad to happen. If Jocasta or rather Oedipus had not existed in the context of the work everyone would have been much happier and the tragedy could have been avoided. Even if the shepherd who saved Oedipus as a child had not existed or the messenger of Cithaeron, the tragedy of the play would have been avoided and the ending would have been much happier..