Comparative Analysis of Sophocles’ Theban Plays and Wajdi Mouawad’s Incendies Focusing on Intergenerational Relationships

This essay analyzes Sophocles’ Theban plays and Wajdi Mouawad’s insightful reinterpretation of those plays, Incendies. Both Oedipus in the Theban plays and Nawal in Incendies unwittingly commit incest and take responsibility for their transgressions. They, however, act very differently toward their children. Oedipus is furious with his sons and curses them because they did not help him when he was exiled from Thebes. Unlike Oedipus, Nawal rejects the logic of retaliation and tries to break the vicious cycle of anger between generations. When incest is revealed, Oedipus gets engulfed in sorrow and never feels happy about having found his real mother and true identity. His children also constantly lament over their family tragedies and pity one another. These feelings prevent them from breaking the cycle of tragedy upon tragedy. Nawal gets horrified when she realizes that Abou Tarek, the torturer who raped her, is Nihad, her own son she had to give up at birth, but simultaneously her heart bursts with happiness to see her long-lost son. In her will, Nawal asks her twins, Janine and Simon, to find their father and brother and deliver her letters to them. Searching for them, the twins discover that their father and brother are the same person. Reading Nawal’s letters, Nihad comes to know the horrible truth as well. In her letters, Nawal tells Nihad that he is a child of love and that there is still the happiness of being together. She asks Simon to reconstruct the family history and Janine to break the thread of anger. While Oedipus leaves his children trapped in a cycle of tragedy, Nawal succeeds to free her children and helps them move on.