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Oedipus the King

In: English and Literature

Submitted By sweetzz31
Words 565
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Professor Pierson

English 104

02 March 2014

" Oedipus the King"

People can be blinded to the truth. The answer to their question

or solution to their problem may have been obvious the whole time. Still, they could not

see the answer. They were blinded by the truth. Connections have been made between

being blind and enlightened. A blind person is said to have powers to see invisible things.

The blind may not have physical sight, but they have another kind of vision.

In Sophocles play, "Oedips the King" there are some adverse situations

relating to the ability to see things literally compared to having vision symbolically. With

this repetition throughout the play it becomes one of its central themes. In the play King

Oedipus started life with a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother,

but Oedipus was blind to the truth his whole life. The parents who raised him weren't his

parents at all. His real parents were Laius and Jocasta. Jocasta who was his who was his

real mother was now his wife. When Oedipus does find the truth, he loses his physical

vision by blinding himself. Even when Jocasta found out the truth, she refused to accept

it and commits suicide.

Jocasta blindness was different from Oedipus as well as both differed from

Tiresias, the blind prophet. Tiresias's blindness was of phyisical nature. Tiresias played

the role of th etyplical pophet in the Greek tragedy. He was phyisically blind, but he had

visions into the future. Jocasta's blindness was different because she knew about the

propphecy, but thought Oedipus was dead. Oedipus was blind in more tha one way. He

was blind to the truth about his own life, and he was also phyisically blind. It is not fate

that takes the sight of

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