Oedipus the King the Play

Oedipus Rex

Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex is the third play in a trilogy telling the extended story of a Greek ruling family. The ability to see things as they really are is a recurring issue for Oedipus, who eventually becomes King. To emphasize Oedipus' ability to see things only as he wanted to see them, Sophocles used the metaphor of vision vs. blindness throughout the play.

Interpreting the concept of vision literally, those who can see have eyes that function properly and a brain that can accurately interpret the information the person's eyes send to it. People can have a "vision of the future" in the form of either personal goals or grander plans, such as world peace. Likewise, a person can be literally blind, unable to physically see. Blindness can also mean something more psychological, such as in the saying "love is blind," meaning that when we are in love we may tune out serious flaws in the person we love.

Sophocles emphasized the different ways one can see, or perceive, reality in a variety of ways. For instance, the soothsayer, who has the ability to see into the future, is physically blind. However, he sees the future clearly when he predicts that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. In spite of making real efforts to avoid such a fate, the prediction comes true. Both Oedipus and his wife/mother demonstrate selective blindness even as the audience can see very clearly that the prediction has come true. It could be argued, however, that Jocasta shows more of this self-protecting blindness than Oedipus, because she knows exactly what happened to the son she had given birth to after the terrible prediction was made. Trying to explain away any possible that Oedipus is that child, she says,

"As to the child - his growth had not extended to the third day When we yoked the joints of its feet

And threw it - by another's hand - upon a desolate mountain."

As she says this, she is ignoring the scars on Oedipus' feet from the hobbling.

She also argues that when Oedipus committed the murder she knows he committed, he acted alone, and notes that her first husband was killed by more than one person:

"But - as it was reported - one day foreign robbers

Slew him ... "

Jocasta suspects the truth, but tries to keep Oedipus from seeing it also. She argues that he should not worry about whether he has inadvertently fulfilled the prediction, saying that if it were true, and the gods wanted him to know that, they would not leave them guessing, but make the facts abundantly clear -- highly visible -- to him:

"Therefore, do not concern yourself with them: for what a god

Wants others to find out, he will by himself unmistakably reveal."