Notes on Oedipus Trilogy
University of gujrat
Bs english liteatture
• Journey from carelessness to prudence, from indiscretion to wisdom,
from rashness and recklessness to circumspection
• Sightlessness provides him foresightedness
• He becomes so humble that he relies on the counsel of his daughter
• Oedipus becomes very compliant and submissive and obeys all the
instructions of the chorus unconditionally.
Textual Quotations
ISMENE On thee, 'tis said, their sovereignty depends.
OEDIPUS So, when I cease to be, my worth begins. ISMENE The gods, who once abased, uplift
thee now.(101)
ISMENE To plant thee near the Theban land, and so Keep thee within their grasp, yet now allow
Thy foot to pass beyond their boundaries. OEDIPUS What gain they, if I lay outside? OEDIPUS
Thy tomb, If disappointed, brings on them a curse.(102)
When time had numbed my anguish and I felt My wrath had all outrun those errors past, Then,
then it was the city went about By force to oust me, respited for years; And then my sons, who
should as sons have helped, Did nothing: and, one little word from them Was all I needed, and
they spoke no word, But let me wander on for evermore, A banished man, a beggar.(104)
Antigone
She is caught in the act by Creon's watchmen and brought before the king. She justifies her action,
asserting that she was bound to obey the eternal laws of right and wrong in spite of any human
ordinance.
, E. R. Dodds, perhaps assimilating Sophocles to the Iliad, supposed that the tragedy of Oedipus
honored the gods, without judging them to be benign or even just. Bernard Knox argues that the
greatness of the gods and the greatness of Oedipus are irreconcilable, with tragedy the result of
that schism. That reduces to the Hegelian view of tragedy as an agon between right and right, but
Knox gives the preference to Oedipus, since the gods, being ever victorious, therefore cannot be
heroic.
Freud charmingly attributed to Sophocles, as a precursor of psychoanalysis, the ability to have
made possible a self–analysis for the playgoer. But then Freud called Oedipus an “immoral play,”
since the gods ordained incest and patricide. Oedipus therefore participates in our universal
unconscious sense of guilt, but on this reading so do the gods.
Fortunately finding Jocasta self–slain, lest he add the crime of matricide to patricide and incest,
Oedipus, repeatedly stabbing his eyes with Jocasta’s brooches, passes judgment not so much upon
seeing as upon the seen, and so upon the light by which we see. I interpret this as his protest against
Apollo, which brings both the light and the plague. The Freudian trope of blinding for castration
seems to me less relevant here than the outcry against the god.
The startling ignorance of Oedipus when the drama begins is the given of the play, and cannot be
questioned or disallowed. Voltaire was scathing upon this, but the ignorance of the wise and the
learned remains an ancient truth of psychology, and torments us every day. I surmise that this is
the true force of Freud’s Oedipus complex: not the unconscious sense of guilt, but the necessity of
ignorance, lest the reality–principle destroy us.
creon: Do not seek to be master in everything, for the things you mastered did not follow you
throughout your life. (As Creon and Oedipus go out.) chorus: You that live in my ancestral Thebes,
behold this Oedipus,—him who knew the famous riddles.
and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot—see him now
and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal
happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.
He was accomplished in music, poetry, and wrestling. From his two marriages came five sons, one
of whom—Iophon—was also a tragic poet. Sophocles’ grandson produced Oedipus at Colonus
after his grandfather’s death. Among other random interesting facts is a report of Sophocles’
University of gujrat
Bs english liteatture
• Journey from carelessness to prudence, from indiscretion to wisdom,
from rashness and recklessness to circumspection
• Sightlessness provides him foresightedness
• He becomes so humble that he relies on the counsel of his daughter
• Oedipus becomes very compliant and submissive and obeys all the
instructions of the chorus unconditionally.
Textual Quotations
ISMENE On thee, 'tis said, their sovereignty depends.
OEDIPUS So, when I cease to be, my worth begins. ISMENE The gods, who once abased, uplift
thee now.(101)
ISMENE To plant thee near the Theban land, and so Keep thee within their grasp, yet now allow
Thy foot to pass beyond their boundaries. OEDIPUS What gain they, if I lay outside? OEDIPUS
Thy tomb, If disappointed, brings on them a curse.(102)
When time had numbed my anguish and I felt My wrath had all outrun those errors past, Then,
then it was the city went about By force to oust me, respited for years; And then my sons, who
should as sons have helped, Did nothing: and, one little word from them Was all I needed, and
they spoke no word, But let me wander on for evermore, A banished man, a beggar.(104)
Antigone
She is caught in the act by Creon's watchmen and brought before the king. She justifies her action,
asserting that she was bound to obey the eternal laws of right and wrong in spite of any human
ordinance.
, E. R. Dodds, perhaps assimilating Sophocles to the Iliad, supposed that the tragedy of Oedipus
honored the gods, without judging them to be benign or even just. Bernard Knox argues that the
greatness of the gods and the greatness of Oedipus are irreconcilable, with tragedy the result of
that schism. That reduces to the Hegelian view of tragedy as an agon between right and right, but
Knox gives the preference to Oedipus, since the gods, being ever victorious, therefore cannot be
heroic.
Freud charmingly attributed to Sophocles, as a precursor of psychoanalysis, the ability to have
made possible a self–analysis for the playgoer. But then Freud called Oedipus an “immoral play,”
since the gods ordained incest and patricide. Oedipus therefore participates in our universal
unconscious sense of guilt, but on this reading so do the gods.
Fortunately finding Jocasta self–slain, lest he add the crime of matricide to patricide and incest,
Oedipus, repeatedly stabbing his eyes with Jocasta’s brooches, passes judgment not so much upon
seeing as upon the seen, and so upon the light by which we see. I interpret this as his protest against
Apollo, which brings both the light and the plague. The Freudian trope of blinding for castration
seems to me less relevant here than the outcry against the god.
The startling ignorance of Oedipus when the drama begins is the given of the play, and cannot be
questioned or disallowed. Voltaire was scathing upon this, but the ignorance of the wise and the
learned remains an ancient truth of psychology, and torments us every day. I surmise that this is
the true force of Freud’s Oedipus complex: not the unconscious sense of guilt, but the necessity of
ignorance, lest the reality–principle destroy us.
creon: Do not seek to be master in everything, for the things you mastered did not follow you
throughout your life. (As Creon and Oedipus go out.) chorus: You that live in my ancestral Thebes,
behold this Oedipus,—him who knew the famous riddles.
and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot—see him now
and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal
happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.
He was accomplished in music, poetry, and wrestling. From his two marriages came five sons, one
of whom—Iophon—was also a tragic poet. Sophocles’ grandson produced Oedipus at Colonus
after his grandfather’s death. Among other random interesting facts is a report of Sophocles’
