Adam, the village judge, broke Mrs. Martha's pitcher as he was leaving Eva's room, jumping out of the window because her fiancé, Ruprecht, came in after him. Now he, as the judge, must investigate the case and condemn the guilty party, and this in the presence of the justice counselor Walter, who has come to inspect the judicial authorities. The plot of this comedy is a mirror image of the biblical story of original sin. But this time it is not Eve who appears as the seductress, but the opposite: Adam tries to seduce her. Kleist had Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as a model for The Broken Jug - after all, it is no coincidence that the village judge has a clubfoot just as Oedipus had swollen feet, and conducts an investigation against himself just like Oedipus. However, unlike the hero of the ancient tragedy, Adam knows that he is the guilty one. With Kleist's reference to Oedipus Rex, the possibility arises to understand The Broken Jug as a comic inversion of Sophoclean tragedy. At the same time, Oedipus Rex offers Kleist the opportunity to lift the weight and importance of his comic protagonist.