Jocasta's last hours: identity, responsibility, and violence in Martha Graham's Night Journey.

This article examines Martha Graham's modern dance work *Night Journey* (1947) in relation to its primary source, Sophocles' tragedy *Oedipus Tyrannos*, focusing particularly on the last hours of Jocasta's life—a moment given limited attention in the original play. It argues that Graham reinterprets key themes of identity, responsibility, and human violence through Jocasta’s perspective and a female chorus called the "Daughters of the Night," thereby shifting the narrative focus from Oedipus to Jocasta and exploring these themes from a female psychological viewpoint. The dance employs retrospective narrative techniques and symbolic choreography inspired by Greek tragedy and iconography, illuminating Jocasta’s internal conflict and emotional turmoil. By doing so, *Night Journey* invites audiences to reconsider the Oedipus myth and Sophocles’ play through the lens of Jocasta’s experience, emphasizing her paradoxical identity as both wife and mother, her acceptance of responsibility, and the destructive emotions she endures.