Template:Sophokles' Oidipous Rex

Prologue to Oidipous Rex

Zeus gets Antiope pregnant. Her father, Nyktues, exiles her and she marries Epopeus, who is killed by Nykteus' brother Lykos, and captures Antiope. She gives birth to twins and they are left exposed to die but are found by a herdsman who names them Amphion and Zethos.

Lykos and his wife Dirke treat Antiope badly. She tried to escape but his recaptured but only after the herdsman recognizes her. Amphion and Zethos find Antiope and tie Dirke to a bull and she is thrown in to ariver. Lykos is also killed and takes control of Thebes and expels Laios who then becomes the first mortal to have homosexual sex and Zeus decrees that Laios will be killed by his son. Hera, goddess of childbirth feels dishonored and sends a Sphinx to Thebes.

Amphion and Zethos marry. Niobe had many children with Amphion and boasts that she is superior to Latona, but her sons Artemis and Apollo kill Amphion and Zethos while hunting. This allows Laios to retake the throne and marry Iokaste.

They remain childless and consult the Delphic Oracle who tells him his son will murder him. He abstains from sex but Iokaste has a baby who is left to expose with the legs pinned. A herdsman finds the child and gives it to the childless Polybus and Merope and call him Oidipous or swollen foot.

As he gows up he hears a chance remark that he is not the real son of the king and queen and goes to see the Delphic Oracle to learn the truth. He does not find out but told that if he returns to his native land he will kill his father and marry his mother. Thinking this means Korinth he goes another way back and has a chance encounter with Laois on a three way crossroads. He kills Laios without learning his identity. Kreon takes over from Laios but at the same time the Sphinx is terrorizing Thebans with a riddle, which if not answered correctly leads to the death of the inquisitor.

The riddle is: What is that which has one voice, and yet becomes four footed and two footed and three-footed

Kreon's son Haimon becomes a victim and Kreon decrees that whoever solves the riddle will become king of Thebes. Oidipous correctly answers and marries Iokaste.

Oidipous Tyrannos by Sophokles

The play starts with a devestating plague. Oidipous has sent Kreon to the Delphic Oracle to find out the cause. Kreon returns to say that the plague will only disappear when the murderer of Laios is punished. Oidipous says that he will punish and exile the killer when he finds out.

Teiresias the blind seer is summoned by Oidipous. He would rather not say what he knows but is forced to accuse Oidipous of the murder and hints darkly at blindness, incest, infamy and wanderings. Oidipos then accuses Teiresias and Kreon of trying to overthrow him. He argues loudly with Kreon which causes Iokaste to come out and find out what is happening. She dismisses the forebodings out of hand saying that Laios was supposed to be killed by his son yet was killed by robbers. This jogs Oidipous' memory and remembers killing three people at the same place. He thinks that he might be the killer of Laios and calls the only surviving witness to see him.

At the same time a messenger from Korinth arrives to say that Polybus has died of old age. Oidipous is relieved but still doesn't want to go back to see Merope. The messenger seeks to allay his fears saying that it was he who gave Oidipous to Polybus and Merope. Oidipous wants to know more so he seeks the shepherd who gave the child to the messenger. The penny drops for Iokaste and pleads with Oidipous not find out more and runs distraught to the palace. Oidipous misinterprets her anguish and finds the shepherd, who is forced to admit that the boy was the son of Laios and Iokaste. The penny now drops for Oidipous who runs to the palace to find Iokaste hanged and he stabs his eyes out.

The final scene is a blood soaked blinded Oidipous beckoning to his daughters and asking for Kreon to exile or kill him. Kreon tells Oidipous he is humiliated and in no position to start dictating what others should do.

Oidipous' Fate and Responsibility

There has been much debate concerning the responsibility of Oedipus and the "fairness" of his punishment. In Greek tragedy and myth in general, it is the norm that someone will suffer some terrible fate as punishment for wrongdoing or some sacrilege. However, it seems as though Oidipous himself has done nothing to warrant the punishment of his awful fate. In fact, the citizens of Thebes in Sophokles' Oidipous the King revere him as the most intelligent of men and as a good ruler, even referring to him as a father. As a result, this story has often been read as a comment on the indiscriminate nature of fate, and that even the best of men can be cursed with an unfair fate, which even the gods are unable to divert. This suggestion would imply that Oidipous himself is not to blame for his actions, and thus deserves no punishment for them. An alternative explanation has already been given above, that it was not Oidipous himself who was cursed, but rather the entire line of Laios as payment for his rape . Still others suggest that Oedipus is allotted his fate as a pre-emptive penalty for the crimes proscribed in the prophecy, implying that he would have committed these atrocities whether they were fated or not, and thus the realisation he has committed them is fitting punishment for him. It can be agreed that Oidipous is not being punished for a simple, tangible crime as is the case with many tragic heroes of Greek myth.

Oidipous the Scapegoat

The myth of Oidipous is a metaphor for the ancient scapegoat ritual. The scapegoat ritual was practiced when a community was in a state of emergency e.g. in the grip of a plague or famine, and it involved expelling a Pharmakos (human scapegoat) from the town. The pharmakos was often a person of little consequence, such as a criminal or a cripple. The pharmakos would be led like a sacrificial animal to a sacred precinct and either killed or beaten and then ejected from the city, taking with it the evils and sins of the community and, thus, purifying the town. The Oidipous story parallels this practice quite closely, as he (technically a cripple) would normally be of little consequence to the city of Thebes. Furthermore, he is physically harmed, albeit by himself, and exiled from the city. It has been said (in Sophokles' version of the story) that when Laios' killer has been removed from Thebes the plague will abate, thus implying that Oidipous is taking with him the sins of the community, filling the role of the pharmakos and ending the crisis in the town.

Psychoanalysis and Oidipous Rex

Taking up the ideas above we can argue that

• Oidipous knew the truth all along
• He was a helpless puppet devoid of free will
• The play has so many improbable ciincidences that we do not need to fear the same fate
• Use Sigmund Freud's analysis of the play

The Sphinx and Oidipous are powerful symbols for him. The Sphinx is scary and sexy. The red vase from Kiel around 450BCE shows her as an alluring woman playing erotically with a young man while tearing him apart. She has a tripart nature - woman's face, lion's body and bird's wings which represents the passions, creativity and superego. She asks riddles and she is a riddle. Sphinx is close to the Greek word for repressor symbolizing man trying to repress his instincts.

Ingres's Oidipous (above)and the Sphinx 1908 has a heroic Oidipous naked outside the lair. The bestial elements are relegated in favor of her breasts.

Gustave Moreau produced an interpetation has her claws either side of her genitals

Plato also discusses the tripartite human soul which he see as bodily appetites, emotions, and controlling intelligence. He uses the Kerebos - the multi-headed dog as a model

In the swollen foot we could see a castration symbol. Laios means left in Greek. Labdakos mmay be connected to the letter lamda - all meaning a limp or one leg longer than the other.

In Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams he asserted the Oidipous complex stems from a child's repression of erotic feelings for the parents of the opposite sex. He also suggests that folk tales and myths and manefestation of dreams. There are two parts to the mind the conscious and the subconscious. Dreams are the disguised fulfillment of of suppressed desires and myths are smiliar as they retell ideas that would otherwise would not be socially acceptable. The imaages produced in the dreamwork are symbols and are private - only the dreamer can account for them or they are universal.

Accoording to Freud boys mature in four stages

• 1. Infant has the pleasure principle dominated by the id
• 2. Oedipal stage. 3 ans 7 the child has his mother as an erotic object and the father feels threatened
• 3. Latency. Child suppresses his sexuality with the formation od a Superego that keeps id other control
• 4. Maturity. Reconciles with his father and chooses another sexual object

If societies are like individuals then the same analysis can be applied to collective myths.

Some examples

• Kings and Quueens = Mothers and Fathers
• Enclosed Spaces = Female body
• Gates, doors, ovens = Female genitals
• Anything longer than it is wide, the number three = Male genitals
• Falling into = Birth
• Journey = Death
• Climbing stairs = Intercourse

Psychoanalytical perspectives on Oidipous

Oidipous did not actually kill Laios

He did it!

• It was prophesised. Although the Delphic Oracle gave ambiguous answers it was prophesized that Laios would be killed by his son and that Oidipous would kill his father. Iokaste ironically retells the story as if to disprove the prophesy. Oidipous took the prophesy seriously and never returned (ironically again) to Korinth. Given that Iokaste hangs herself, she is obviously in no doubt as to who killed Laios

JOCASTA: . It said Laius was fated to be killed by a child conceived by him and me.

OIDIPOUS: it was my fate to defile my mother’s bed, to bring forth to men a human family that people could not bear to look upon, to murder the father who engendered me

• The Plague. The plague has been visited on Thebes, which will only be lifted when the murderer of Laios is exiled

CREON Laius was killed. And now the god is clear: those murderers, he tells us, must be punished, whoever they may be

• The blind seer corroborates the prophesy. Teiresais is summoned to Oidipous but would rather not say that he knows Oidipous to be the son of Laios and Iokaste and by inference the prophesy has come true.

TEIRESIAS: Is that so? Then I would ask you to stand by [350] the very words which you yourself proclaimed and from now on not speak to me or these men. 420 For the accursed polluter of this land is you.

• Iokaste gives a description of Laios. Iokaste describes what Laios looked like and who he was with the day he was murdered. Oidipous realises this is the person he killed at the same crossroads

OEDIPUS: Did Laius have a small escort with him [750] or a troop of soldiers, like a royal king?

JOCASTA: Five men, including a herald, went with him. A carriage carried Laius.

OEDIPUS: Alas! Alas! It’s all too clear! Lady, who told you this?

JOCASTA: A servant—the only one who got away. He came back here.

The servant lied. The servant said that Laios was set upon by a band of robbers but would he have been truthful and said that Laois and the others were killed by one man? He disappears shortly afterwards and does not return to explain his story to Oidipous

CREON He told us it was robbers who attacked them— not just a single man, a gang of them— they came on with force and killed him.

In all probability, Oidipous unknowingly killed Laios. However, Oidipous jumps to a lot of wrongful conclusions during the play and it’s just possible he jumped to the wrong conclusion about his own guilt. Creon offers some bitter words of advice that come to haunt Oidipous later.

CREON: I do not know. And when I don’t know something, I like to keep my mouth shut

Oidipous knew all along

The evidence in the play seems to lead us in different directions. At times Oidipous seems very inquisitive and his powers of reasoning are very strong. He visits the Delphic Oracle on the premise of chance remark about his parentage by a drunk and he solves the Sphinx’s riddle

At other times he fails to join the dots

• Why did he never enquire as to Jocasta’s husband’s death?

• Why did Iokaste or Oidipous never have a conversation about his scarred feet? His name is “swollen feet” after all

• When Creon returns from Apollo’s shrine he tells Oidipous about the servant who was with Laios at the time of his death but does not send for him yet he says he wants to find Laios’s murderers. He only summons the servant later when Iokaste describes the events at the crossroads?

His self-mutilation upon hearing from the old servant that he is Laois’ son is swift. He does not ask for further or contradictory proof. Did he therefore subconsciously know and as Brian says just repress his thoughts?

One critic suggested that Tiresias and Oidipous embody "two halves of a single psyche", so that Iodipous unconscious knowledge is express by Tiresias. The blind Tiresias knows the truth and the seeing Oidipous suppresses it

I'll say that subconsciously he did know but consciously did not and the unfolding events brought that realisation to the surface