Answer to Question 1
- Freuds description of the so-called Oedipus complex is probably the most famous and certainly one of the most controversial of his theories about the nature and structure of the human personality (although usually overlooked is the key word perhaps in the sentence beginning It is the fate of all of us, where the theory is given its most succinct and direct expression). Many people reject the concept on its faceand those who support it would no doubt claim that the vehemence with which others dispute it is an unconscious acknowledgment of its truth. But even those who distance themselves from the specifics of Freuds analysis will likely agree with him and, of course, with Aristotlethat we are moved so strongly by the story of Oedipus because on some level we identify with him, in the sense that we also risk seeing our best impulses and most benevolent intentions overwhelmed by our own personal weaknesses (with a big assist from the often arbitrary nature of existence).
Answer to Question 2
- Dramatic irony occurs when the speaker lacks understanding of a larger context or knowledge of some crucial piece of information, and his or her words take on an ironic significance that he or she is unaware of. An example takes place relatively early in the play, an instance so obvious that Teiresias is moved to point it out to Oedipus:
Teiresias: I say that with those you love best you live in foulest shame unconsciously and do not see where you are in calamity.
Oedipus: Do you imagine you can always talk like this, and live to laugh at it hereafter?
Teiresias: Yes, if the truth has anything of strength.
Oedipus: It has, but not for you; it has no strength for you because you are blind in mind and ears as well as in your eyes.
Teiresias: You are a poor wretch to taunt me with the very insults which every one soon will heap upon yourself. (lines 400410)
When Oedipus has threatened Creon with death for supposedly plotting against him and the chorus asks him to spare Creon, Oedipus replies: I would have you know that this request of yours / really requests my death or banishment (lines 726727).
A remarkable bit of dialogue occurs when the chorus introduces Jocasta to the messenger by saying This lady is his wife and mother of his children (lines 988989). An alert director would instruct the actor(s) playing the chorus to pause ever so slightly after the word
mother.
In the dialogue of the messenger with Oedipus and Jocasta (lines 10091108), dramatic irony abounds when he assures Oedipus several times that his news will free Oedipus from worry, not only because Polybus is dead but especially because Polybus and Merope were not his real parents.
Finally, after Jocasta, having divined the truth, rushes away from Oedipus in horror and pity, Oedipus makes the following speech, which, under the circumstances, is ghastly in its overtones:
Break out what will I at least shall be willing to see my ancestry, though humble. Perhaps she is ashamed of my low birth, for she has all a womans high-flown pride. But I account myself a child of Fortune, beneficent Fortune, and I shall not be dishonored. Shes the mother from whom I spring; the months, my brothers, marked me, now as small, and now again as mighty. Such is my breeding,
and I shall never prove so false to it, as not to find the secret of my birth. (lines 11451155)
Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Lucian Freud.
Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando), Moon Pine, Ueno, No. 89 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
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