All throughout Sophocles' play "Oedipus at Colonus" distortion is the key to creating plausible reasons for Oedipus' acts that morality will never tolerate. By written law all acts are measured according to their necessity and severity. By natural law acts are based on their morality. However, there is a third law, a law of distortion. This last law believably explains all those acts that do not fall under the first two categories. In the play Oedipus performs acts that are judged by written law, natural law and the law of distortion, for only this last law can understandably make sense of some of the more outrageous of his actions.

When Oedipus had a run-in with a man over the right of way, he states, "Let me tell you: The man I murdered would have killed me. By law I am innocent, void of all malice." By written law...