Philoktetes and Three Other Plays: Ajax, Women of Trachis, and Elektra

These four tragedies exhibit Sophocles' deep interest in the contents of a man's character and his unquestionable skill in analysing them in a most dramatic, which is to say, most theatrical way. He pits one moral question against another moral question to show that, Justice is not a simple thing to either understand or to apply. To kill a mother, a Queen, or not? To compromise one's morals, or not to?

Sophocles urges the audience in his theatre to think and think deeply and be engaged about such crucial moral dilemmas, rather than to simply sit and be entertained.