Oedipus Rex Critical Lens

Blindness Vs. Sight In the plays Oedipus the King and Antigone by Sophocles, the city of Thebes deals with two kings, who cause great pain to the city. In the play Oedipus the King, Oedipus is the very tempered king of Thebes, in which this city has a plague. Little does Oedipus know after blaming everyone else, he is the real cause of the disaster.

Having been given many hints in his life, Oedipus cannot detect and know the truth. He is blind, to the extent that he could not even understand his life and does not even want to accept his origin. In this way, we get to know the contrast between eyesight and insight (Calame, 1996). After Oedipus realizing and coming to know the truth, he gets out his eyes so as to have the vision (Calame, 1996). He removes his eyes so as not to see his children and siblings who would remind him of his actions.

In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles displays a tragedy in which a righteous man is plagued by his hubris, leading to his inevitable downfall. To cleanse himself from his torment, Oedipus is left with no other choice than to painfully rip out the sinful eyes that deceived him. The act of Oedipus gouging out his eyes reveals Sophocles’ didactic purpose: one's physical eyes can be blind towards the truth. When a vicious plague hits Thebes, Oedipus begins to display signs of pride blinding him from the right course of action.

Oedipus discovers the body and is in so much grief he uses the golden pins that held Jocasta’s dress and “spears the pupils of his eyes” (93). This unbearable mishap is the last article of the proclamation that Oedipus carries out. Furthermore, in an attempt to keep his children, Creon advises him to “not be the master in everything. What you once won and held did not stay with you all your lifelong” (107). Oedipus was once a man that was not physically blind but in truth he was.

Oedipus experienced blindness figuratively and eventually literally. The concept of sight and blindness in Oedipus Rex teaches many lessons. One lesson is that seeing something is based on one’s perspective, therefore it will not always be experienced the same way among different people. It depends on the way people perceive the information they receive.

The plague is blood, / blood, breaking over Thebes.” (ln. 123-25) After hearing about this, Oedipus continually asks questions about the identity of the man. However, even after he seemly should figure it out, Oedipus never realizes that it is himself who has caused the plague and must be killed or banished, according to Apollo. He proves that he is

Secondly, the environmental disaster was seen as a warning from the gods that Oedipus was in the wrong and Thebes being ruled immorally. Similarly, after Augustus kills his father, the first step of the fulfillment of the Oedipal prophecy, a doctor tells Amalia that “this cold spell—it’ll kill the last of the crops” (Dove 78). Environmental disasters such as famines or droughts have historically been used to convey an unnatural situation that is against divine will. Additionally, similarly to how Oedipus continued to bear a permanent physical scar due to his transportation away from his birth parents, Augustus also has scars on his side. Oedipus, which means swollen foot in Greek, was named due to his injured feet resulting from his ankles being bound together after birth.

Oedipus The King by Sophocles Theme of Blindness Sophocles was a prolific writer and his long life enabled him to have a prodigious literary output. There is always a deep philosophic content at the back of Sophocles’ plays. Men suffer in the tragedies of Sophocles, characterisation always charged with emotion and poetry guesstimates the growth and development of his dramatic genius. One of the main underlying themes in Oedipus Rex is blindness.

Then I killed them all.” (813). Now having killed his father, Oedipus had fulfilled part of the prophecy that he was actively trying to run from. His attempt to stop the prophecy has only sped its approach. Not only that but Oedipus’ decision to kill Laius also caused the Gods to plague the city.

Sophocles used the sight vs. blindness motif in Oedipus the King to emphasize the theme of self-discovery. Tiresias played a major role in Oedipus’ self-discovery. He was physically bind, and yet he knew all things, including

Oedipus is defined as Latinized form of the Greek Οιδιπους (Oidipous), meaning "swollen foot" from (oideo) "to swell" and πους (pous) "foot". In Greek legend Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta. He unwittingly slew his father and married his mother. Oedipus was a great king but the Sphinx riddle was a perfect analogy of Oedipus’s life and this is evident through the plot events. Firstly there is three parts of the sphinx riddle, and the first part of the riddle was “What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning…” this riddle was first mentioned in the story when Oedipus wanted to pass through the gates of Thebsis but was stopped by the sphinx.

Oedipus was a tragic hero he was seen as a great man and was king,but he fell to misfortune because of his disability to see past his pride and anger which led to his demise. By not being able to see past his pride and anger Oedipus was not able to to avoid his prophetic destiny. He was blinded by his pride and anger so much that it became his tragic flaw ultimately leading him to his

His hubris, pride, let the truth be seen as false or not be seen at all. Second, Oedipus was physically blind. His physical blindness played into the role of the Greek tragedy. The blindness completed the tragedy for Oedipus. Every Greek Tragedy is supposed to end with the main characters experiencing their own personal tragedy.

But, he was also a good man, father, husband, and king, and for this reason he is mourned over for his loss of fortune. One of the themes in Oedipus Rex is physical and metaphorical blindness. In Greek culture, those who were physically blind were said to have metaphorical "vision" and were messengers of the gods. For example, In the beginning, Oedipus is blind, not physically, but metaphorically because he does not know the

Sophocles further shows this in his writings of Oedipus Rex to convey that no one can escape their fate; the symbols of Oedipus’ scars and sight vs. blindness help to reinforce this theme. The symbols of sight and blindness in Oedipus Rex represents knowledge and expresses denial. In the first scene Sophocles writes about an old wise man named Teiresias visiting Oedipus to try and help the young king find the murderer of king Laius; during this visit Teiresias states, “You cannot see the