Oedipus: Swollen Foot

Sophocles was one of the greatest Greek play writersand one of his great plays is Oedipus the King. The downfall of Oedipus the King is the Gods cursed him and he is unable to change his destiny. It is apparent that the first question in the play is the question of fate. It is true that all the actions of Oedipus were formed by a strong spirituality. For example, Oedipus was foretold by the Gods to kill his father and to get married to his mother. You can see from the play that the Gods wanted him to do everything he didn’t want to. He found that the right decision is to leave his house. But he didn’t understand the most important thing, which is the Gods determined his destiny as Bagg states, “…the gods have willed Oedipus to do what he did. Oedipus and all the other characters come to this con­clusion; the design and verbal texture of the play confirm it. And in the theater the constant allusion to a daimonic shaping force makes this fatedness vivid and powerful” (Bagg 21).

Aristotle’s definition for a tragic hero is one who is not in control of his own fate, but instead is ruled by the gods in one fashion or another.  The tragic hero for Aristotle is tragic because of their lack of control or will in the face of their predetermined future and downfall.  A great tragic flaw (hamartia) is the hero’s devil may care attitude at the beginning of each story, and then their despondency and stagnation of hope that meets them at the end of the play (Aristotle Ibid., Book XIII, 1085b 35 & 1086a 12—14, P. 909].  In times when Sophocles lived it was common to think that the person’s fate was connected with the Gods. And they determine a person’s life. Oedipus was shown like being free at his choices and his ways. But all the events in his life were fated. Oedipus was completely sure he was the master of his life and he had complete power over it. He was different from all the people surrounding him. That was the main reason why the Gods decided to show him that his life was in their power allowing him to be only a pawn in his own destiny. The success with Sphinx, for example, was connected with the Gods’ actions giving Thebes everything it needed. But Oedipus thinks it was fully his success and Gods had nothing to do with it.

            In drama, ego is the flaw to which the hero succumbs.   This is Oedipus’ great error.  His ego is a compromise to his fortune.  Even in the gods’ world he stands out as unique or special; his flaw is in his power to be invisible, or to have a hidden identity even to himself.

Tragic heroes begin their stories with aplomb of luck, or ego, or a rosy view of the world, and each play seems to end with destruction.  Oedipus is blind at the beginning of the play and then becomes physically blind at the end of the play thus making the ethereal concrete.  With Greek drama; the tragedy of the unmistakable truth found in the character’s own self-realization is the typically denouement.  The playwright’s tragic heroes have survived in life under false pretences, thus they are doomed to suffer from their one flaw of ego.

In classic Greek drama, Plato’s idea of morality is presented as rational action.  Morality isn’t a free will that governs humanity’s actions, but rather it is universal reason (life as a whole) that dictates action, thus in dramatic terms, playwrights are given leeway;

In Oedipus there is another case of fate controlling the destiny of man.  Due to fate’s interference in the lives of heroes, it must be pondered whether or not they are heroes because they are devoid of choice and by definition a hero chooses their actions, but with fate, their actions are predestined.  For Oedipus, his only link to heroism is that in his redemptive attitude[1].  His heroic stance in Greek culture is seen as a protagonist who felt guilt for what he had done[2] and this translates to the audience that if a hero can succumb to evil then they themselves, as less than heroic, are more likely to fall in favor, in the eyes of the gods.

Human nature is a nature of reason, not strictly adherent to passion or feelings, and in drama playwrights strive to be exact in their representation of reality.  Morality then, becomes the crux of Oedipus Rex.  Morality is reason.  This is not to say that Plato and other classic Greek writers were ascetic; rather they placed passion, and feelings in their plays but the ethics of humanity are tied into the good of a person because reasonably, being virtuous, or good leads a character to happiness or release at the end of a modern play. The word for this given by Plato is eudemonism, which means blissful.

 As a Greek hero, Oedipus is controlled by fate:  His remittance of gouging his eyes shows that he is a strong hero because of his debt payment of sight and as Green states, “Professor Frank suggests that Jocasta’s rope is an umbil­ical cord, that here we have a “role reversal,” in which Jocasta becomes “the dead infant Oedipus should have been, if the tragedy was to have been averted.”  Then, in “another stage of the role reversal,” he blinds himself. He is not cas­trating himself–a Freudian theory that Frank rightly rejects–but in the per­
sona of Jocasta he “rapes his own eyes with her ‘phalluses'” (5-6) (Green 2).  For Oedipus the flaw could be contained within the word ego.  Ego in answering the sphinx riddle and unbeknownst to him killing his birth father, marrying his mother, having children; ego accounts for all of Oedipus’s actions, and it is fate which had designed ego and thus was the ultimate ruler of Oedipus.

            The true definition of a tragic hero resides with the idea of fate versus free will.  In the Oedipus play Sophocles presents the audience or reader a tale of ill fortune that all seems to be predestined from the Delphi oracle.  It was due to the oracle that Oedipus’ father sent him into the wilderness as a child in order to fend for himself or to die from the elements, so that Oedipus would not grow up to kill his father one day; but it is through fate that Oedipus does kill his father and it was the design of fate that deteriorates the concept of free will in the Oedipus cycle.

Plato was a man filled with faith in human nature; an optimist/realist of some sorts.  Plato’s philosophy of human nature doing evil was that a person only does evil in ignorance, for he believed everyone, just as himself wants only what is good.  Miller wanted Willie to want life, but in the shackles of self-delusion Loman had to free himself of believing he could be anything better than what he was and thus the only real end to the play would have to be death.  Death, not as an escape but as a choice so that the main character still has virtue is the basis of Greek drama.  In modern drama, the lesson is not about escapism but coming to terms with life and making a fundamental choice.

Choices can be broken down into good and evil in modern drama or to be more exact they can be dichotomized into heroic and a state of succumbing to one’s own humanity. The tragic hero may do evil deeds but in the end of a play, virtue is heeded.  The source of a character doing evil is brought about by unlimited desire.  Something that goes unmitigated becomes possessive of that person and they in turn want, and want, without satiation.  This is when the appetitive part of the soul (the part of the soul that wants sex, food, etc.) overtakes the rational (part seeking truth, and reason) of the soul resulting in moral weakness or akrasia.

In Oedipus, there is another case of fate controlling the destiny of man.  Due to fate’s interference in the lives of heroes, it must be pondered whether or not they are heroes because they are devoid of choice and by definition, a hero chooses their actions, but with fate, their actions are predestined.  For Oedipus, his only link to heroism is that in his redemptive attitude[3].  His heroic stance in Greek culture is seen as a protagonist who felt guilt for what he had done[4] and this translates to the audience that if a hero can succumb to evil then they themselves, as less than heroic, are more likely to fall in favor, in the eyes of the gods.  As a Greek hero, Oedipus is like Hamlet in that they are both coerced by fate but with Oedipus his remittance of gouging his eyes shows that he is a stronger hero than Hamlet because of his debt payment of sight.

The classic Greek tragic hero is not in control of his/her own fate, but is instead a character in the playground of the gods and goddesses and destiny.  Thus, when Oedipus is faced with a situation in which seemingly free will would play a part, he is instead destined to have a lack of control over the situation, and thus it is because of fate that Oedipus ‘sees’ his downfall.

            It is the ego that is Oedipus’ tragic fall and it is that trait by which he is controlled by fortune.  Oedipus succumbs to ego by his mastering of the sphinx riddle; his ego also leads him to conquer and kill his biological father and claim his kingdom as well as to sleep with his mother.  Oedipus lives like a king, and conquers to fulfill his ego that was given to him through fate.  This is Oedipus’ great error.

            Oedipus begins his story after being tossed to the wild to survive by being brought to a different kingdom, where he is adopted by the king and queen, and thus not through free will, since he was a baby and unable to make a conscious choice, but through fate does Oedipus end up in a different kingdom.

With Oedipus, his tragic hero status is ensured by his unwillingness to exist as a partial man; without knowing his origins, without knowing his true identity.   When he discovers his true identity, therein lies his status as a fateful tragic hero.  He realizes his ego got in the way of his life.  His ego was his ruin.  As Victoria Hamilton (1993) states in Narcissism and Oedipus,

From within the tragic vision, Oedipus appears a fit candidate for the tragic hero. The hero’s search for truth leads to greater and greater suffering and finally to a blinding and a castration of his sense faculties. However, the absolute truth which Oedipus pursues is not a transcendental truth, but the precise details of his own origins — a limited knowledge of the facts surrounding his birth. His ruin is brought about by his refusal to rest content with partial truths and with lies (254)

In Oedipus’ tenacious nature is found the hamartia that Aristotle speaks to; even in questioning Teiresias Oedipus won’t quit until he gets what he wants.  In this famous scene Sophocles writes, “(Oedipus) Indeed I am so angry I shall not hold back a jot of what I think.  For I would have you know I think you were complotter of the deed and doer of the deed save in so far as for the actual killing.  Had you had eyes I would have said alone you murdered him” (30).  Oedipus hits no breaking point in his inquiry until his entire stygian history is revealed.

In the end Oedipus became an object of awful interest and curiosity. He was even called the cursed and sacred. And nobody supported him in his horrible isolation. Oedipus turned out to be evil and unhappy and he had to carry a heavy burden during all his life. But there was one action he willed and did by himself without outside power. When he revealed truth of his life he decided to leave his native town as he couldn’t live with the new reality which was killing him mentally.

That is the promise of Greek drama; veracity, despite the overwhelming depression of life and its deception through the façade of free will.  I believe that Oediupus’ Achilles heel can be found in his ego.  I also think that Oedipus is blind at the beginning of the play in an ephemeral sense and by the end of the play he is physically blind as a payment for not being able to see his own life according to the truth.  Sophocles is honest in his writing, and in Greek drama heroic standards like the Achilles heel is what is depicted.  Whether or not the play ends on a happy or sad note, the point is fate, not free choice.  The realism of choice does not allow the audience to believe they may submit to the ultimate decision in their life which way to turn.  Greek drama, especially Oedipus Rex gives the audience no illusions about harsh reality, but it also gives the difference between fate and circumstance.

            Oedipus was shown by the prophecy of the Gods that he was capable to kill his father and to marry his own mother. And because of this prophecy he is always on alert, and has to conceal the awful abilities which are inside him. But he took everything too literally and didn’t see the real truth. And only in the last moment of mental anguish he understood how much of a fool he was. And in the result he put out his eyes. That’s how he expressed the main idea of the tragedy, that the Gods who rule the destiny and the person is only an instrument. The fate is nothing compared to a person who understands and realizes his own moral and spiritual essence.

Work Cited

Aristotle.  http://olldownload.libertyfund.org/EBooks/Plato_0407.pdf

Bagg, R.  The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles:  Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos, and

            Antigone.   University of Massachusetts Press.  Amherst, MA.  2004.

Green, J. M.  Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.  The Explicator.  Vol. 52, Issue 1.  1993. pp. 2.

Hamilton, V. Narcissus and Oedipus: The Children of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books, 1993.

Jung, C. G.  (1978).  Essays on a Science of Mythology.  Princeton University Press, New York.

Sophocles.  (1977).  The Oedipus Cycle.  Harcourt Inc. Florida.

[1] The Greeks believed that a hero had one tragic flaw and that flaw was their downfall.  Every hero had one, and for Oedipus his flaw was exerted best when he gouged out his own eyes.

[2] He married his mother and killed his father, all through the design of fate and the Delphi oracle.

[3] The Greeks believed that a hero had one tragic flaw and that flaw was their downfall.  Every hero had one, and for Oedipus his flaw was exerted best when he gouged out his own eyes.

[4] He married his mother and killed his father, all through the design of fate and the Delphi oracle.