Oedipus

“Oedipus the King” is the story of one man’s discovery, through his persistent questioning, that he is guilty of unwittingly killing his father and marrying his mother, and his horrific reaction to this discovery. Oedipus’s own strengths, his pride, self-confidence, intelligence, power, and his quickness to anger, are eventually revealed as sources of his error and frailty, ending in his self-blinding. His mistakes through ignorance, his mistakes through excesses of temper and over-confidence, …

…riddle, that of his origins. He succeeds at the expense of physical suffering, his blindness, thus gaining Tiresias’s truth. The blindness seems to symbolize man’s uncertain journey through life, not seeing the realities that will face him along the way. Through his errors and frailties, Oedipus does obtain a measure of inner strength and understanding. Works Cited Sophocles. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. “Oedipus the King”. Trans. Robert Fagles. Boston. Bedford/St. Martin, 2002