Oedipus Sophocles\' Oedipus the King

Oedipus

Sophocles' Oedipus the King is the tragedy of a king who, in the very attempt to flee his fate, brings about his destiny. Throughout the play, themes of sight and blindness occur in a number of variations. One of these is by means of the characters and their full awareness or lack thereof in terms of the whole truth. Sight therefore could be seen to be symbolic of truth, while blindness represents hidden truths or outright lies. At the end of the play, Oedipus blinds himself in a striking attempt to regain the innocence of his previous lack of full knowledge.

Sight and Blindness: Oedipus

The themes of sight and blindness are most clearly delineated in the main character, Oedipus. The play begins with the kind as a competent, good king, with a characteristic tendency towards openness and honesty. Indeed, when Creon requests to be heard in private, Oedipus insists that everything should be said with as little secrecy as possible, in the presence of everyone. In the light of this characteristic, it is ironic that Oedipus has spent his entire life to date in symbolic blindness, or indeed unawareness, of the fact that he has fulfilled the prophesy he so desperately attempted to flee as a young man.

A further irony is that Oedipus believes that he knows the truth. Indeed, he believes that his true parents are far away, and that he has averted the prophesy by leaving them. Oedipus' blindness however lies in the truth that is hidden from him: he has indeed killed his true father and married his real mother. It is interesting to also note here that Oedipus does not face his concerns but rather choose to hide and flee from them. In this he almost chooses to be blind to the real truth behind what he believes it to be. It is a selective blindness that leads to the perpetuation of his unawareness and finally to his downfall.

In this, the Oracle and the Chorus represent sight. They warn Oedipus against searching for the truth, as it can only lead to disaster, which ultimately it does. His desire for truth and honesty however will not let him remain blind to the true state of affairs. As Oedipus moves from his symbolic blindness to finally shedding light upon the ugly truth, he cannot handle finally seeing, and blinds himself. This literal blindness and concomitant pain now takes the place of the blissful sightlessness that he has experienced throughout his life. Oedipus journey therefore comes full circle: from blindness to sight to blindness again.

Although Oedipus shows himself to be a just and honest king, he is also guilty of deliberate blindness at times. He for example conveniently forgets or ignores the less savory parts of his past, for example his encounter with Laius at the crossroads. Also, when it suits him, he forgets the good forces that have helped him in the past. An example of this is the prophet Teresias, whose advice the king defies to his peril.

Another thematic reference to Oedipus' blindness is the fact of his pride. He so prides himself on his own insight and honesty that he defies those that know better than him, including the prophet, the Chorus and the Oracle, all of whom warn him not to search for the truth. So, in an interesting dichotomy between the sight and blindness themes, both Oedipus' tendency towards uncovering the truth and hiding from it leads to his downfall.

Oedipus as the main character is therefore multi-dimensional. He embodies a multiplicity of themes, including the ones of sight and blindness, as well as destiny and free will. Oedipus begins his story literally as a seeing person, but ends in blindness, while symbolically his story begins with blindness and gradually moves towards the clarity and sight of the terrible truth. In this dichotomy, Oedipus' dichotomy in searching for the truth while at the same time hiding instinctively from its horror. In the end, he commits the ultimate act of hiding in physically and violently blinding himself.

Sight and Blindness: Creon

In comparison to Oedipus, Creon is a fairly one-dimensional character, in that he is the antagonist to Oedipus' protagonist. Throughout the play, Creon pretends to be what he is not in order to gain his ultimate goal, which is the crown. In this he uses sight and blindness at will in order to manipulate those he wishes to use and/or harm to achieve his own ends. His use of these themes therefore lies in the blindness that he imposes upon others rather than his own.

In this manipulative manner, Creon also prefers to hide from others, whereas Oedipus prefers to conduct his business in the open in order to demonstrate his honesty. Creon is by nature deceitful and therefore prefers to flee from the eyes of others. There is a parallel between this tendency and Oedipus' flight from the prophecy from his childhood. Oedipus initially chooses his blindness. In contrast to Creon, however, he does this in an almost subconscious manner, while Creon is fully aware of what he is doing.

Creon therefore embodies the themes of what appears to be and the real truth behind appearances. In the beginning, he convinces everybody, including the audience, that he is Oedipus' friend, and that obtaining the crown is the furthest thing from his mind. An example of Creon's artful deception can be found in lines 651 to 690 in the play, where he uses Oedipus' rather hasty decision to ban him to make himself appear like the calm, diplomatic voice of reason. The audience here then tends to be sympathetic towards Creon rather than Oedipus. This then completes the deception, as Creon's argument that the kingdom is shared in equal parts between Oedipus, Jocasta and himself, and that he therefore has no interest in usurping Oedipus appears pliable.

The key is however that it only appears so. Creon is very artful in his deception, working to win trust before the final revelation. Interestingly, this revelation arrives at Oedipus' final moment of symbolic sight and literal blindness. Creon makes it clear that he is eager to take over not only the king's throne, but also to separate him from his children. Creon also reveals himself as a coward, as he uses Oedipus' moment of greatest weakness to make the revelation of his true desires.

Sight and Blindness: Jocasta

Jocasta makes the third part of the ruling trio in Thebes. When Oedipus was a child, she also made the decision to attempt defying the Oracle that predicted the death of her husband and her marriage to her own son. Cruelly, she sent a servant to leave the child who would grow up to become Oedipus on a hillside, where she assumed him to have died at the hands of robbers.

Jocasta chooses her own blindness in a variety of ways. First, she never investigates to verify the death of her child. Secondly, she does not recognize the death of her husband and her marriage to his killer as a possible fulfillment of the prophesy. Because she assumes that her child is dead, she refuses to believe the signs. She chooses blindness in a much more concrete way than Oedipus or even Creon does. Indeed, she actively attempts to keep Oedipus from further investigating the truth. In the end, she finds sight even more unbearable than Oedipus does, and dies for it.

The theme of blindness, especially in its deliberate form, therefore culminates in Jocasta. She actively pursues blindness in the same way that Oedipus actively pursues insight. Even to the end she prefers to hide from insight. Whereas Oedipus' chooses literal blindness to dull the psychological pain of his symbolic sight, Jocasta chooses death as the ultimate hiding place. Ironically, neither choice results in a favorable outcome either for the individuals or for the country. This leaves Creon, the deceitful manipulator, as the only remaining member of the trio who is sufficiently able-bodied to take over the rule of Thebes.

Conclusion: Free Will and Destiny

Free will and destiny are themes addressed throughout the play. This particularly applies to Oedipus and his birth parents. Not accepting the Oracle's prediction as inevitable destiny, Oedipus' parents abandon him and assume him to be dead, as mentioned above. This is a choice they make by exercising their free will.

Oedipus similarly does not wish for the fulfillment of the prophecy. His choice is to leave the people that he assumes to be his birth parents in order to avoid the prophecy. Oedipus therefore also does not initially accept the inevitability of his destiny. It is clear that both Oedipus and his parents made choices available to them by exercising what they perceived as their free will.

However, it is clear that these choices precisely led to the prophesy they were trying so desperately to avoid. In retrospect, it appears that it might have been wiser to simply have left well enough alone: Had Jocasta and Laius kept Oedipus, it is much less likely that he would have killed his father and married his mother than the case was. And had Oedipus remained with the parents who raised him, the prophecy would also have been unlikely to come about.

On the other hand, one might also argue that Sophocles appears to indicate that, no matter what decisions were made, free will would never have been part of it. Indeed, destiny and prophecy are so overwhelmingly strong that whatever decisions were made would have led to the final and inevitable conclusion.