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Oedipus Rex Themes

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9 views11 pages

Oedipus Rex Themes

Uploaded by

Muhammad Ashiq
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Oedipus Rex

THEMES
 The ancient Greeks believed that their gods could see the future, and that certain people
could access this information. Prophets or seers, like blind Tiresias, saw visions of things
to come. Oracles, priests who resided at the temples of gods—such as the oracle to Apollo
at Delphi—were also believed to be able to interpret the gods' visions and give prophecies
to people who sought to know the future. During the fifth century B.C.E., however, when
Sophocles was writing his plays, intellectuals within Athenian society had begun to
question the legitimacy of the oracles and of the traditional gods. Some of this tension is
plain to see in Oedipus Rex, which hinges on two prophecies
 The first is the prophecy received by King Laius of Thebes that he would have a son by
Queen Jocasta who would grow up to kill his own father. The second is the prophecy that
Oedipus received that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius, Jocasta, and
Oedipus all work to prevent the prophecies from coming to pass, but their efforts to
thwart the prophecies are what actually bring the prophecies to completion.
 This raises a question at the heart of the play: does Oedipus have any choice in the
matter? He ends up killing his father and marrying his mother without knowing it—in
fact, when he is trying to avoid doing these very things.
 Does he have free will—the ability to choose his own path—or is everything in life
predetermined? Jocasta argues that the oracles are a sham because she thinks the
prediction that her son would kill her husband never came to pass. When she finds out
otherwise, she kills herself. . In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus has fulfilled his terrible prophecy
long ago, but without knowing it. He has already fallen into his fate. One could argue that
he does have free will, however, in his decision to pursue the facts about his past, despite
many suggestions that he let it go. . In this argument, Oedipus's destruction comes not
from his deeds themselves but from his persistent efforts to learn the truth, through which
he reveals the true nature of those terrible deeds.
 Oedipus himself makes a different argument at the end of the play, when he says that his
terrible deeds were fated, but that it was he alone who chose to blind himself. Here,
Oedipus is arguing that while it is impossible to avoid one's fate, how you respond to your
fate is a matter of free will.
GUILT AND SHAME

 The play begins with a declaration from the oracle at Delphi: Thebes is suffering because
the person guilty of the murder of King Laius has not been brought to justice. Oedipus
sets himself the task of discovering the guilty party—so guilt, in the legal sense, is central
to Oedipus Rex. Yet ultimately it is not legal guilt but the emotion of guilt, of remorse for
having done something terrible, that drives the play. After all, one can argue that neither
Oedipus nor Jocasta are guilty in a legal sense. They committed their acts unknowingly.
Yet their overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame for violating two of the basic rules of
civilized humanity—the taboos against incest and killing one's parents are enough to
make Jocasta commit suicide and to make Oedipus blind himself violently.
Sight vs Blindness

 When Oedipus publicly declares his intention to solve the mystery of King Laius's
murder, he says,
 "I'll start again—I'll bring it all to light myself."
 Oedipus's vision and intelligence have made him a great king of Thebes—he solved the
riddle of the Sphinx and revitalized the city. But he is blind to the truth about his own life
It takes the blind prophet, Tiresias, to point out his ignorance and to plant the first seeds of
doubt in Oedipus's mind. When Oedipus mocks Tiresias's blindness, Tiresias predicts that
Oedipus himself will soon be blind.
 And indeed, when Oedipus learns the full story—that he has killed his father and married
his mother—he gouges out his eyes. He learns the nature of fate and the power of the
gods, but at a great cost. And though he is blinded, he has learned to see something he
could not see before.
 ACTION VS. REFLECTION:
 In his quest for truth, Oedipus is a man of constant action. When the priests come to ask
for his help, he has already dispatched Creon to the oracle to
 find out what the gods suggest
 When the chorus suggests that he consult Tiresias, Oedipus has already sent for him.
Oedipus decides quickly and acts quickly—traits his audience would have seen as
admirable and in the best tradition of Athenian leadership. But Oedipus's tendency to
decide and act quickly also leads him down a path to his own destruction. . He becomes
convinced that Tiresias and Creon are plotting to overthrow him, though he has no
evidence to prove it. At several stages where he might have paused to reflect on the
outcome of his actions—where he might have sifted through the evidence before him and
decided not to pursue the question further, or not in such a public way he forges onward
 Even threatening to torture the reluctant shepherd to make him speak. And it is the
shepherds words that irrefutably condemn Oedipus. Even here, his will to act doesn't end.
Discovering Jocasta, his wife and mother, dead, Oedipus quickly takes his punishment
into his own hands and gauges out his eyes.
 TRIPLE CROSSROAD:
 Oedipus killed King Laius at a place "where three roads meet," or a triple crossroad.
Typically,
 crossroads symbolize a choice to be made. Yet because the murder of Laius occurred in
the distant past. Oedipus's choice has already been made, and so the triple crossroads
becomes a symbol not of choice but of fate.
SWOLLEN ANKLES

 As an adult, Oedipus still limps from a childhood injury to his ankles. This limp, and his
very
 name—which means "swollen ankle," and which was given to him because of a childhood
ankle injury—are clues to his own identity that Oedipus fails to notice. As such, Oedipus's
ankles become symbols of his fate. His ankles, literally, are the marks of that fate.

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