“You are your own enemy” (Guthrie, Oedipus Rex, 22:43). In the film adaptation of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” (1957), Sir Tyrone Guthrie portrays the characters as truth seekers that are ignorant when trying to find King Laius’ murderer. On the other hand, Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis of Sophocles’ work introduces us to “The Oedipus Complex” (1899) which states that as we’re young we grow infatuated with our opposite sex parent and feel resentment towards our same-sex parent. These two pieces have adapted mirror like meanings of Sophocles’ tragic play. Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Sigmund Freud explore this through the use of ethos, irony, social distance, and the visualization of state of mind in order to show the manifestation Oedipus undergoes living with his “mix of killing and unimagined shame” (Guthrie, Oedipus Rex, 21:19). Though the answer is in front of Oedipus, he wears a mask that protects him from the answers he does not want to believe is true.
To begin with, Oedipus is his own tragedy since his actions and decisions are the reasons why he was not able to thoroughly see his mistakes. Sir Tyrone Guthrie places Oedipus in the middle of the town to begin the interrogation of finding the murderer of King Laius so the city can be unwind of its plague. Sir Tyrone Guthrie does this on purpose so the audience and the servants around him can see the foolish mistakes their great King achieves. Tiresias, the blind prophet who can see the past, present, and future, speaks to Oedipus, since Tiresias has the ability to only see the truth. Even though the audience can see that Oedipus is not taking any consideration of the prophet’s words when Tiresias directly yells to him that Oedipus is the “murderer [he] [seeks],” the ignorant side of Oe...
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...now where he was “…in calamity,” seeking the truth to stop the plague was in his good intentions but his unconscious mask would not let him see the answers (Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 425). It is the reason why “most young people outgrow the compulsion” for their parent “and thereafter repress it” which is why Oedipus was unknowingly his own disaster (Jacobus 476).
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. "The Oedipus Complex." A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College
Writers. By Lee A. Jacobus. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. 475-85. Print.
Oedipus Rex. Dir. Tyrone Guthrie. By Sophocles and William B. Yeats. Perf. Douglas Campbell and Eleanor Stuart. YouTube. YouTube, 01 Feb. 2013. Web. 07 Feb. 2014. .
Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Trans. David Grene. 1st ed. Chicago & London: University of
Chicago, 2010. Print.
Oedipus the King, also known as Oedipus Rex was a tragic play written by Sophocles around 429 BC. The story of Oedipus is one of blindness, growth, deception, and fate, and Sophocles gives the reader several shocks throughout the play. The play begins with the citizens of Thebes begging their ruler, Oedipus to lift the plague that is causing their city to come to ruins. His brother-in-law Creon returns with news from the Oracle at Delphi stating that they must find the murderer of the previous king of Thebes, Laius. Oedipus quickly sets out to attempt to solve this mystery. Oedipus then calls upon the blind seer Tiresias to tell him who killed Laius. Upon finding out that Tiresias has told Oedipus that he is the murderer, he sends Tiresias away. While leaving, Tiresias explains the marriage between a
Oedipus can be argued to be a sympathetic ruler of his people, "my heart must bear the strain of sorrow for all." (4). He shows a strong desire to rid the land of its despair. Yet as the reader captures a more in-depth glimpse into Oedipus' soul, we find him to be a jealous, stubborn, "blind", guilty, and sinful man. Oedipus' character outwardly seems to want nothing more than to find the guilty persons involved in the murder of Laius, yet when given obvious clues he turns a blind eye, not wanting to know the truth behind the prophecy.
Trying to solve the mystery of who killed the previous King, Oedipus does not look at the facts around him. As a prophet, Teiresias explains to Oedipus that he is at fault for the death of Laius but Oedipus does not accept this as true, he embraces the darkness and his view of the truth. Teiresias goes further to convince Oedipus of his fault by saying, “Your clear eyes flooded with darkness. That day will come.” Oedipus has placed himself in a world that is suitable as the truth for him. He is not prepared for change or the opinions of others although he is directly seeking the answer to who killed Laius. This connects to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” because Oedipus is very similar to the prisoners. He is set in his way and the light of knowledge does not immediately impact him. Teiresias bluntly says to Oedipus, “You have eyes to see with, but you do not see yourself” (Sophocles, 42). He pushes and pushes Oedipus to understand that he killed Laius but with no luck. Once Oedipus learns more about how Laius was killed and figures out that he killed a man that way he goes into the light. His reality has now changed just as it did for the prisoner who was released from the cave. But for Oedipus, facing the truth is something he is not able to do with ease. Teiresias says to Oedipus that “wisdom is a curse when [it] does nothing for the man who has it” (37).
Self-control can be defined as the ability to control oneself, in particular one’s emotions or desires, especially in difficult situations. Comparatively, self-image is the idea one has of one’s abilities, appearance or personality. Often self-image and self-control are thought of as separate entities, but in the case of the tragic play “Oedipus Rex,” Sophocles demonstrates the connection between the two through the tragic events that occur. Integrated in the plot is the growth of the character of Oedipus, for it is he whom indices the investigation to stop the current plague in his kingdom of Thebes, his personal rashness and ignorance of the past come back to haunt him. Oedipus’ incautiousness when discovering the true state of Thebes is
Poet and Scholar Robert Graves wrote in 1995, “Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as ‘Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?’…The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.” Oedipus the King written by Sophocles in 430 B.C. focuses around the second function that Graves noted. The play has been around for centuries, has evoked psychological theories, and will remain a classic. Sophocles has managed to touch on social, ethical, psychology, and more importantly philosophical issues in one play. Perhaps one of the most popularly known psychologist, Freud, was able to develop the theory that every child has a desire to sleep with their mother and kill their father. This is called the "Oedipus Complex". Oedipus the King tests all psychological boundaries for the reader by evoking self identification through the tragic concept of fate and using the literary tool of the chorus to internalize all of the emotion.
Oedipus is very knowledgeable during the play and at some times still extremely ignorant. He doesn’t always put pieces together. When they are right in front of him. Many people in the play call him ignorant when he still believes that he is knowledgeable. Tiresias says “ All ignorant! And I refuse to link my utterance with a downfall such as yours” (19). In this quote Tiresias means that Oedipus is ignorant even though he acts like he knows everything. Oedipus does not know what Tiresias knows and that is that the curse, which stated the Oedipus would marry his mother, has come true. Tiresias can see what will happen when Oedipus finds out that Jocasta is really his mother and wants to prevent that from happening. When Tiresias does not tell Oedipus the information he seeks he gets angry. Tiresias also has another quote that goes along with knowledge verses ignorance. Tiresias states “I’m blind, you say; you mock at that! I say you see and still are blind-appallingly: Blind to your origins and to a union in your house. Yes, ask yourself where are you from. You’d never guess what hate is dormant in your home or buried with your dear ones dead, or how a mother’s and a fathers curse will one day scourge you with its double thongs and whip you staggering from the land. It shall be night where you now boast the day.” (23). This quote says a lot. First Tiresias accuses Oedipus for mocking him yet still not knowing the information that he knows. Which is the curse. He accuses Oedipus for being blind also and not knowing the truth of his origins, which are from a different mother, and then he grew up with. He doesn’t see he has married his mother. In one part of the quote it states “Yes, ask your self where are you from”. Tiresias is hinting at the fact even though Oedipus thinks he’s extremely knowledgeable he’s ignorant because he doesn’t know where he is from.
Sophocles uses a mixture of both visual and emotional imagery to create the morally questioning, Greek tragedy ‘Oedipus Tyrannos’. He presents the audience with an intense drama, which addresses the reality and importance of the gods that the Greeks fervently believed in. The play also forces the audience to ask themselves if there is such a concept as fate.
In the beginning of the play, Oedipus has perfect physical vision. However, he is blind and ignorant to the truth about himself and his past. He desperately wants to know, to see, but he cannot. Oedipus' blindness which must be considered is that many times throughout the course of the action he is warned not to pursue the matter any further, for fear that the truth could be damaging to him as the prophesies would suggests. The events are made all the more tragic at the point where he thinks he can 'see' when he at last realizes that he is in fact the murderer of Laius, and yet he is still blind to the final horrible truth. To make the situation worst Jocasta his wife advises Oedipus not to pursue the matter further: "Stop-in the name of god, ….call off this search!" Jocasta has seen the truth but Oedipus is only worried in she finds out he was not of noble birth.
Greek politician and playwright, Sophocles, in his play, Oedipus the King, depicts a series of chronological events of the consequences of Oedipus’ downfall caused by his excessive pride. Sophocles’ purpose is to instruct readers that too much pride can dismally lead to unfortunate events. Sophocles illustrates an effective tone in order to inform the readers of the negative outcomes of stubbornness and denial.
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). The real power of Oedipus The King lies not in the fact that it illustrates the Oedipus complex—that Oedipus was oedipal—but that it depicts a troubling and seemingly universal dimension of human behavior; the way we unwittingly create the fate we fear and abhor. Oedipus, like many of us, falls victim to what he frantically strove to avoid. Readers identify with Oedipus not because they wish to possess one parent and eliminate the other, but because they often end up precisely where they didn’t want to be: a woman who was abused as a child may choose a partner who mistreats her; or the boy who was crushed by his marginal status in his family and unwittingly lives his life so that as an adult he is repeatedly unseen and under appreciated. What Oedipus could teach us is how magnetic the pull is to repeat what we desperately wish to
Dramatic irony in Oedipus the King is evident throughout, which is similar to the latter play, but in a different form. In here, the irony is evident. Oedipus the King revolves around characters' attempts to change their destiny (which fails) - Jocasta and Laius's killing of Oedipus and Oedipus's flight from Corinth. Each time somebody tries to avert the future, the audience knows their attempt is futile, creating irony. When Jocasta and Oedipus mock the oracles, they continue to suspect that they were right. Oedipus discounts the oracles' power, but believes in his ability to uncover the truth, yet they lead to the same outcome. His intelligence is what makes him great, but it is also what causes the tragedy. When he ridded Thebes of the Sphinx, Oedipus is the city's saviour, but by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta, he is its affliction, causing the blight that strikes the city during the opening. Meanwhile, the characters, especially Teiresias, mention sight, light, darkness, &c as metaphors, while referring to `seeing the truth'. However, while Teiresias knows the truth and is blind, Oedipus can see all but the truth. When he discovers the truth, he becomes blind. Also, he does not just solve the Sphinx's riddle - he is its answer. His birth is mentioned throughout the play (crawling on `4 legs'), and he never relies on anybody but himself (`standing on his own `2 legs'),...
The myth of Oedipus is one of a man brought down by forces aligning against him. Over the years, different playwrights have interpreted his character in various fashions. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus is a man who is blind to the path on which his questions take him and exemplifies the typical tyrannical leader in ancient times; in Senaca’s Oedipus, it is the fear of his questions that give Oedipus a greater depth of character, a depth he must overcome if he is to survive his ordeal.
Oedipus Rex, an ancient Greek tragedy authored by the playwright Sophocles, includes many types of psychological phenomena. Most prominently, the myth is the source of the well-known term Oedipal complex, coined by psychologist Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s. In psychology, “complex” refers to a developmental stage. In this case the stage involves the desire of males, usually ages three to five, to sexually or romantically posses their mother, and the consequential resentment of their fathers. In the play, a prince named Oedipus tries to escape a prophecy that says he will kill his father and marry his mother, and coincidentally saves the Thebes from a monster known as the Sphinx. Having unknowingly killed his true father Laius during his escape, he marries the widowed queen of Thebes, his mother Jocasta. Many events in the story should lead to suspicion of their marriage, but out of pride and ignorance Oedipus stubbornly refuses to accept his fate. Together, these sins represent the highest taboos of Greek society, revealed by Socphocles’s depiction of the already pervasive story. Before the Thebian plays, the myth centered more around Oedipus’s journey of self-awareness; meanwhile, Sophocles shows Oedipus’s struggles with his inevitable desire toward his mother throughout these stages of psychological development.
While it is more difficult to do so now, the play transcends its time with its human truths and allows catharsis to still happen. While the setting – both time and spatial aspects – and the dialect of Oedipus Rex make the play difficult to understand and connect to, the ideas are still commonplace. Plagues, murder, prophecies, and incest are all ideas that have been in literature for ages, which provides common ground for the audience to hold onto. Terror and pity over the ideas portrayed are still able to reach the viewers. Oedipus Rex is just as capable of causing catharsis now as in Aristotle’s
Oedipus and Tiresias, characters of Sophocles' play "Oedipus Tyrannus," are propelled to their individual destinies by their peculiar relationships with truth. Paranoid and quick to anger Oedipus, is markedly different from the confident and self-assured Tiresias. In the dialogue between the two men, Oedipus rapidly progresses from praise of Tiresias as a champion and protector of Thebes in line 304, to blatantly accusing the blind prophet of betraying the city in line 331, to angrily insulting him in line 334. Rather than be intimidated by the protagonist's title and temperament, Tiresias draws strength from what he knows is true and is able to stand his ground.