My knowledge of King Oedipus was merely based on what I’ve read from Freud’s theory. As defined, Oedipus Complex is an unconscious sexual desire of a child for his mother and hate toward his father as the child considers him a rival for his mother’s affection. I thought that the story of Oedipus the King was just about a man killing his own father to sleep with his mother. It was only when I read the play that I learned that it wasn’t Oedipus’s intention to murder his father, let alone copulate with his mother. But it was fated, some would say, that’s why it happened, or perhaps it’s a subconscious process, if you ask Freud:"His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours — because the Oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so." (Freud)BackgroundAn oracle informed King Laius and Queen Jocasta that they will have a child that is destined to murder his father and sleep with his mother. Upon knowing this, King Laius pinned the infant’s feet together and decided to cast the infant away to die. Unable to bear doing it with their own hands, the queen commanded a servant to take the infant to the mountainside and let the infant die there “from exposure.”The servant brought the infant to the mountainside but could not bear the guilt of committing the act, so he handed the infant to a shepherd whom carried the infant to Corinth where the infant was given to a childless royalty. The infant was then named Oedipus because of his swollen feet.Growing up, Oedipus heard rumors that he was not of the king and queen’s flesh, so he confronted his parents about this. But he was told that those stories were all untruth, that he was their own child. Still suspicious, Oedipus went to the oracle of Delphi to ask who his real parents were. The oracle ignored his question but told him of his fate: that he was to kill father and marry his mother. After that, he made a choice to “put the stars between him and Corinth” and never to return again to avoid the aforementioned oracle. On his way to Thebes, where “three roads meet,” he had an encounter with a carriage, which pushed him off the road. A violent quarrel ensued over the “right of way,” and this led to him killing the rest of the group but one. Unbeknownst to him, one of whom he killed was his father, King Laius, thus fulfilling the first part of the prophecy. When he arrived in Thebes, the country was under the curse of the sphinx who kept asking a riddle, destroying those who can’t answer it:“What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?”Oedipus gave his answer: a man. (As an infant, a man crawls in all fours, growing up, he walks on two feet until he walks with a walking stick [three legs] in old age). This released the city from the sphinx’s curse. Oedipus was rewarded the kingship of Thebes, marrying Jocasta, his own mother. The prophecy is fulfilled without any of them knowing it. SummaryThe city of Thebes was stricken by a plague, and the people went to the king’s palace to seek aid. The king already sent Creon, his brother-in-law, to the oracle of Delphi to ask how to stop the plague. The king was waiting for the oracle, he told his people. Then Creon had arrived and asked King Oedipus whether they speak in private or he speak the oracle in front of the people. Oedipus opted for the latter, for “nothing is more important to him that the suffering of his people.” The oracle said that a murderer of the previous king was polluting the soil of Thebes and justice must be served in order to free the city from the plague. With characterisitic pride, Oedipus promised that he will find the murderer and serve justice. In the palace, Tiresias, the blind seer the king has sent for, told Oedipus, during a heated argument, that he is the polluter, King Laius’s murderer. Insulted, Oedipus fumed from the seer’s statement, then put two and two together: he thought that this was one of Creon’s schemes to destroy his kingship. He took pride at his “discovery,” his seeing through things, even telling the seer how he, being just Oedipus, answered the sphinx’s riddle and freed the whole land of Thebes. The blind seer told Oedipus that what he said was the unblemished truth, that he was polluter. But Oedipus proceeding with his arguments, irritating Tiresias. “You are please to mock my blindness,” the blind seer said, “but have you eyes and do not see your own damnation?” Tiresias exited the palace, angered by the king’s actions. Creon knew about the king’s accusations on him and swore that if the king proves him guilty, the king is free to implement justice. After being told by the chorus to take Creon’s word for it, Oedipus then allowed Creon to go.Jocasta came in and asked what’s happening. Creon told her the king’s accusations. Jocasta convinced the king that her brother is telling the truth and that the blind prophet Tiresias was wrong—that many prophets had been wrong before. She told Oedipus the story of King Laius’s child, a child that was said to be fated to kill his own father and sleep with his mother. She told him they “killed” their own child to avoid the oracle. Oedipus was told that King Laius was killed by robbers, not by his own son. But something in story troubled Oedipus as Laius was killed at a place “where three roads meet.” He was reminded of an incident wherein he killed a group of people. He asked Jocasta for Laius’s descriptions, which matched exactly to one of whom he killed. Jocasta comforted Oedipus, telling him that there was a survivor, a shepherd, who swore that several robbers, not one person, killed the king and his men. Oedipus then sent for that shepherd. While waiting, Oedipus recounted to Jocasta his past and how he arrived to Thebes. He told him why he left Corinth because of an oracle and how he killed a group of people on his way to Thebes. He was frightened that he might have killed King Laius and his men. Jocasta went out to the holy temple to pray for Oedipus. Then a messenger from Corinth arrived and said that Polybus, king of Corinth, the father of Oedipus, was dead. Good news! Jocasta thought as she went back to palace, along with the messenger. The news brought relief to Oedipus but was still worried that maybe it was because of the grief he caused by leaving Corinth that killed his father. He was still afraid of the oracle: that he will marry his own mother. The messenger told him to fear not as he was not of the king and queen’s flesh. Oedipus was stunned, and he asked the messenger why he knew all this. The messenger replied that in the past, a fellow shepherd gave him an infant, which he brought to the childless king of Corinth. That infant grew up to be Oedipus. For further proof of his tale, he told Oedipus about his ankles, how they were swollen because they were pierced. Oedipus asked who gave the baby to him. The messenger said that it was one of Laius’s servants. By this time, Jocasta turned white as she now knew the truth. She stopped Oedipus from questioning further, but Oedipus ignored her, saying that he wants to know the truth—who he really is—and wouldn’t stop until he finds it. Jocasta ran out of the palace, cursing.The shepherd Oedipus sent for had arrived. The messenger of Corinth reminded the shepherd of the their past and told him that the infant was now in front of them: Oedipus. The shepherd was in terror, asking Oedipus not to question him any further, but the king threatened to kill him if he wouldn’t utter the truth. Finally, the secret was revealed. The shepherd cried out loud that it was done to avoid the oracle: he was commanded by the king and queen to let the infant die in the mountainside but had not the heart to do it, thus giving it to a fellow shepherd.Oedipus broke down in disbelief, in rage, and felt the curse of his fate. How vile the gods were to make him subject of their whims! He told the servants to bring him a sword so he would tear his mother’s wombs. He went to their home, rushed into Jocasta’s room, and found her body hanging dead. He took her down, removed the gold pins from her dress, and plunged them into his eyes. “He pierced his eyes time and again until bloody tears ran down his beard —not in drops but in full spate a whole cascade descending in drenching cataracts of scarlet rain.”Now blind, Oedipus begged to be exiled, but Creon told him that it was for the gods to decide. Oedipus asked for his daughters and begged Creon to take care for them. Oedipus was then led away from the city. Love and Self-PreservationWhat struck me first was King Laius’s immediate, bold, and seemingly cold-blooded decision to kill his own child—which was still an infant—upon knowing the oracle. I felt no love coming from both parents, only the guilt of staining their hands and concern of their fame and power and, mostly, of themselves. But it’s their child, the union of their own flesh. It was a wonder to me how they could resort to infanticide. When I read about ancient Greek history, I found out that “infanticide through exposure” was widely practiced during that time. It was a “preferred method of disposal, as that act in itself is not murder...the child had technically had a chance of being rescued by the gods or a passerby.” This was once acceptable. It’s evident that they have no love for their own child. Instead of suffering—or maybe even dying for their own beloved child, they have chosen themselves. It’s this absence of parental love that disturbs me; its what led to the act of disposing the infant as if it were just an object, a piece of furniture that keeps on bringing bad luck.The oracle and King Laius’s choice to kill his own child were the first major events of the play. This is the advent of the doomed fate of Oedipus, who lived and obliviously killed his father and slept with his mother, and even sired offspring. When Oedipus discovered the truth, he was in the fullness of his rage toward his fate and his parents that he wanted to rip her mother’s womb apart with a sword. But Jocasta, choked by the guilt, hanged herself as she could not face her son. So Oedipus took the golden pins from his mother’s dress and plunged them into his eyes repeatedly, perhaps for seeing the horrible truth. Bleak and miserable, the play exposes the extent of selfishness and how far humans will go just to survive—that even a parent will kill, eat, his own child if the situation demands it. This same act, though varying in degrees and in methods, is happening in this world. It’s a wickedness that never fades with time. Humans will do anything for self-preservation no matter how ruthless they’ll become. Man is part animal; man can just throw away all morals and sink in depravity. Morality is maybe an illusion. (What kind of morals do gods have putting Oedipus and his parents in that situation?)As a child, for example, I even saw a mother cat eating her own kittens out of hunger. (Humans too have done this.) It’s either the lack of love or just the powerful instinct for self-preservation—the life instinct that “screams bloody murder.” Humans, undoubtedly, do this in a number of ways. But we know humans have the ability to transcend such circumstances, and that’s through selfless acts of love and sacrifice, which are perhaps alien to the gods. Immortals will never know what dying for someone means. Love and sacrifice are the most beautiful and heartbreaking of human acts because in doing so, human show courage to face their own vulnerability and mortality for what they love. A deed gods can never do—completely fading into the darkness without salvation and be nothing more. Love, when strong enough, is a respite from death.(Many times , I was tempted to respond to Christians saying that Jesus died on the cross for us sinners; I want to tell them that technically, Jesus died for three days and was resurrected. It’s a divine act, the resurrection, I know, but what I am referring to here is a savior, a Messiah, without a promise of resurrection, like a soldier, a mere mortal, dying in war whose name is now forgotten.)Now I imagine King Laius and Queen Jocasta loving and raising Oedipus despite knowing the oracle, even accepting it wholeheartedly because of their love for the child. Perhaps this selfless love alone can make the gods tremble and Oedipus will change his fate.I say this not out of pride but because of hope for humanity: We may suffer heavily from our weaknesses, but we can be stronger than the gods if we choose to be. We can create a better world because we are mere mortals; we know what life really means because we know what it means to only live once. Free Will and FateWas Oedipus merely a puppet of fate or... I pondered whether it was entirely the gods’ fault that the prophecy has been fulfilled or it was solely because of Oedipus’s own choices, since the oracle did not directly influence his actions when he killed his father and slept with his mother. We cannot deny that those acts were because of his own choosing, but we also cannot just leave behind the oracle as it may be the one that started the chain of events that led him to where he ended. (Paraphrasing from Albert Camus’s The Rebel: It’s impossible to live a life without choices, but it’s also impossible to live a life of perpertual choosing.) As for the reason behind the oracle, we can never know what the gods wanted to happen in the first place, why such cursed fate had befallen on Oedipus. Despite the prophecy, it can never be denied that Oedipus and his parents had made the choices, not the oracle. This is what torments us, being humans: we have free will, but we can never control everything. From another perspective, it can be simply seen that Oedipus was a puppet of fate as if he made no conscious choices, because it’s all written and God knows everything that will happen. To think of it that way, we see that we are but phantoms of the past and no longer responsible for our present actions. Since the present is highly dependent on the past conditions (the Butterfly Effect), for example, the oracle, how can we accountable for our present choices? In this play, without the oracle being made, things would have been different for Oedipus and his family. A single element creates a chain of infinite continuity, and this single element also stems from a previous one and the previous one from a previous... It roots all the way back to beginning. We can even think that the oracle has been made as punishment because of King Laius’s or Queen Jocasta’s actions in the past. ConclusionI believe in making conscious choices, but I also believe that there are things that go beyond our choosing, that even if we were to make that choice, it won’t make a difference as we can only choose based on what the circumstance permits. I can “choose” to fly by flapping my hands, but that doesn’t mean I can do it. I can choose to live forever, but that doesn’t mean it’s possible. But here we see the “act of choosing,” which is the heart of the matter. We can choose what we want to become. The curse is that our capacities are finite; we are not gods. What happened to Oedipus was the torture of being human, and the same curse is on us.
We all know the story that this play tells; it has been part of the cultural heritage that most of us have known for as long as we can remember, and many of us have read it any number of times. Each reading brings new insights, new questions, and rather than tell the story once again, I prefer to dwell on the thoughts and questions that this reading brought to my mind.Wherein lies the Evil in this play? In the prophecy and, apparently, the determinism of the gods that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother? In Oedipus’ doing so despite his attempt to avoid this fate and his ignorance that he has but done what Fate decreed? How can he be held responsible for this? In his attempt to outwit Fate, in his attempt to be an independent moral agent, an attempt that may be interpreted as hubristic? Why does he blind himself? Out of guilt? Out of a refusal to look upon his wife and children, the result of his life’s tragic trajectory? Is it an irrational impulse that has no meaning? The play is all about seeing, about revealing the hidden, and blinding is its antithesis. Perhaps Oedipus’ blinding of himself is a symbol of the blindness he labored under in the past, creating a sort of blindness-brief seeing-blindness sequence; maybe seeing is too much to bear. It is interesting to note how hearing supplants seeing as the play progresses. And why does Jocasta kill herself, since she can hardly be blamed for what has occurred? Simply because she has offended an incest taboo, albeit unknowingly? Or is this the final blow for her, the culmination of grief that began when her infant son was taken from her to be exposed and killed many years before? There are many puzzles in this play beyond the obvious puzzle that history hides and that is eventually revealed. This is the story of the overcoming of illusion, of developing clear sight. Is seeing clearly always painful? Is seeing oneself for who one is what we try hard to avoid (Oedipus’ power of denial, of an almost willful blindness to the signs and messages coming to him, is stark)? Is it necessary for healing, however? Do we remain somehow polluted and constrained without the sight that comes through knowledge, or is knowledge itself a source of suffering? Is this the reason why we try so hard to distract ourselves, to avoid the hard job of seeing ourselves without illusions? How interesting, though, that Oedipus is able to become a free moral agent, governed by free will and not by necessity, only when he achieves dis-illusionment.The gods foretell events, implying determinism, and then hold Thebes responsible for not banishing Oedipus. Why do they hold Oedipus responsible and punishable for something they decreed and that he did unintentionally, indeed for something he tried desperately to avoid? There is an element of Fate or Evil in this play that is beyond rationality, beyond understanding.The Chorus is all important; its speeches should not be rushed through in order to “get to the action.” It is the conservative voice of the past, of collective wisdom. From the very beginning of the play, the Chorus has premonitions of disaster. How is each of us fated? What part does chance, fate, or determinism play in our lives? To what extent do we take responsibility for our actions, for the pattern of our lives? For what are we responsible and for what are we not? How does intention change our responsibility for our actions? In what ways are we blind to what we do, to what we have done, to how these have changed or influenced our lives and the lives of others? To what extent do we live in perpetual ignorance of the effects of our lives and actions? And once we know ourselves, can we live with what we once were, where we once were, or is all irrevocably changed? At what price do we gain knowledge of ourselves, of reality? Oedipus gains such knowledge only through living his life in reverse, moving from his present into his past.It is easy to see how texts like this have survived to speak to readers and the watchers of drama through millennia. The themes are universal, the questions perennial, the mysteries haunting even as they are unfathomable.
What do You think about Oedipus Rex (2006)?
"Look and learn all citizens of Thebes. This is Oedipus.He, who read the famous riddle, and we hailed chief of men,All envied his power, glory, and good fortune.Now upon his head the sea of disaster crashes down.Mortality is man’s burden. Keep your eyes fixed on your last day.Call no man happy until he reaches it, and finds rest from suffering."I believe that in one way or another, everyone - at least to some extent - has heard of the story of Oedipus and Jocasta. It's one of those tales that's been on our collective consciousness forever even though we may not even be able to assertively answer about its origins. The same might be said, for example, of Odysseus and Don Quixote: they've been so used and re-used, adapted and re-adapted throughout so many generations and in so many different formats that one might as well state they were simply born within us, for they're public and common knowledge. I, for one, believed Oedipus and Jocasta's tale came from the Bible! As I was never a religious person and therefore never payed much attention to it - and unfortunately never decently studied Greek mythology -, I used to unconsciously attribute to the Bible the origins of all stories which seemed to me as too ancient to properly date. I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed about that, Sophocles. I stand corrected now.Every time I read an ancient text I recurrently find myself to blame because of the same mistake: being surprised by its quality despite being written so long ago. It turns out more and more I agree with an analysis I've read somewhere that states that, unlike science, there is no progress, no discovery in art. An artist, while he creates, is not helped by the efforts of all the others - like scientists are - and depends upon his own individual truths. The ancient art is in no way a primitive version of the art created by our contemporaries. So it should not be astonishing to me that a text written thousands of years ago possesses the same qualities or refinement of awarded pieces that only now cracked their fifty years of age mark.Putting the story itself a little aside, it's precisely this refinement, this brilliance in the construction of the narrative that impressed me so much. The pace, the development of the action and disentanglement of this intricate plot was written so masterfully that it requires little investigation in discovering the reasons why it became so influential to the subsequent generations. Now, I'm not knowledgeable enough to affirm that Sophocles himself wasn't influenced by other works that preceded him, so I'm not claiming unprecedented originality to his name here, but merely(!) talent in using the most appropriate techniques to write so many wondrous predicates into this marvelous play. The ability with which he created, sustained and solved the various mysteries that surround this classical tragedy is very remarkable, as well as a striking mixture of pity and horror that the themes developed here successfully imposes on the reader.Themes such as fate, free will, interference in human life by the Gods (for some that hasn't changed much, has it?) and its inflexible exploration of human nature and suffering are skillfully written in the form of intense dialogues and shocking revelations that could even prove too disturbing had not been Sophocles accurate treatment, much like the reader likely pities Phedre's actions instead of automatically blaming her for her fate. The ever so mesmerizing battle between destiny and logical consequences also plays a big role here: does fate completely control Oedipus's actions - is it all predetermined? -, or is he simply a victim of his own doings, even if unknowingly?Oedipus Rex (also known as Oedipus the King and Oedipus Tyrannus) tells the story of Oedipus, a man that's respected and loved in Thebas, where he is King after solving the riddle of the Sphinx and marrying Jocasta, the widow of the previous king. After a plague threatens his kingdom, he is begged by a chorus of Thebans for help and Oedipus sends for an oracle in order to find some guidance. As it turns out, Tiresias, the blind prophet, believes the King is the only one to blame for his malady. At first outraged and, because of it, incensed into proving his innocence, he starts connecting the clues that he receives from various bits of information gathered by different sources. (view spoiler)[As it turns out, Oedipus, after leaving his home in Corinth due to a prophecy which stated he would murder his father and sleep with his mother, entered a fight with some men at a crossroads and ended up killing them, before arriving in Thebes. One of these men was Laius, Jocasta’s husband and previous King. In order to escape the prophecy, Oedipus fell into it, as he was Laius’s son who was sent away to be killed many years ago exactly because he received an oracle that he would be murdered by his own son. Oedipus’s life ended up being spared and, unknown to him, he was adopted by the King of Corinth. Now it was clear to him that, besides murdering his father, he has slept with his own mother and fathered children that were also his brothers and sisters. Jocasta, upon finding out this complex imbroglio, can't deal with the unimaginable situation and kills herself. (hide spoiler)]
—Renato Magalhães Rocha
As a student in a Greek high school I was more or less forced to read this, translate it from the ancient Greek text for my exams to "prove" I deserved to go to the next educational level (where we did Homer), do assignments on it, listen to my professors as they spoke of its "meaning" and ask myself why Sophocles wrote it to begin with. And I HATED the damn thing. I hated Oedipus just as much as I hated Sophocles. However, when I left high school, I realized that people - not only in Greece, but around the world - praised it as a masterful writing. Even though a Greek tragedy - with the always heavy hovering Fate over the heroes and their family tree - it's so much more than what my high school teacher told us it was. I wasn't mature enough to understand it then (I viewed Oedipus as a incestuous, poor bastard at the time!) I'm old enough to do so now. And not many things can be said about its vastly horrific grandeur.
—David Gallagher
"Count no man happy till he is dead."A tragedy always moves around a character - who is virtuous except for one fault. This one fault brings on to him the misfortunes, that would have been otherwise undeserved. With Oedipus, this fault was his hubris. His extreme pride shows several times: 1. his disbelief or mocking of gods (to a Greek writer, not believing in god have looked like hubris.)2. the reason for which he killed Laius - because the two won't y 've way to each-other.3. his calling himself 'son of fortune' (yes, you read it right, son of fortune)His ultimate fate made each of these actions look like a slap in face. His piercing of his own eyes was quite symbolic of his blindness.Oedipus, for all his pride, is a good person or someone who is trying to be a good person. He had saved the city by answering the riddle of Sphinx and had tried to rule like a just king. Yet, his pride which is excited by his good fortune, was enough to bring on his ultimate fate.I was a bit surprised, when he, being so good with riddles, couldn't put two and two together, when Jacosta pleaded him to stop the search (having herself figured out the truth). Or he did, but choose to close his eyes to the obvious truth till it was stark clear.There is definitively the old question of free will. It simply doesn't exist. Determinism including self-fulfilling prophecies dominates the book.Sophocles, BTW, is probably not the original creator. There are several greek variations available including those from poets like Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus and Euripides. This one is just most popular.
—Sidharth Vardhan
