Irony in Oedipus

Blog Hwk #1: Oedipus

"I speak of course as a stranger to the story

and stranger to the crime..." (14)

This whole page is full of Irony. This is when he is talking to the people (I think at the alter of Zeus) and he wants someone to confess to the crime and come forward. No one moves and he continues talking about how they shouldn't fear punishment besides being banned or that it's because they're covering for the guilty one - the Irony is that the one talking is the guilty one, and he doesn't even know it! I think Sophocles chose the diction he did because the double use of stranger has a meaning and an implication both which are different but go hand in hand. He says he is a stranger to the story, he doesn't know what's causing the plague, and stranger to the crime but as I read it, it seemed to me, he was implying that the action of murdering is a strange one for someone like him. I think if you read it in that sense, it emphasizes the Irony because he did kill the man. Obviosly, if you're a stranger to the story you're a stranger to what took place in it (the murder). Or so he thinks. Little does he know.