Author Question: In the drama of Sophocles, violence and bloodshed take place offstage;thus, the suicide of Jocasta ... (Read 54 times)

tnt_battle · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

In the drama of Sophocles, violence and bloodshed take place offstage;thus, the suicide of Jocasta is only reported to us. Nor do we witness Oedipuss removal of his eyes; this horror is only given in the report by the second messenger. Of what advantage or disadvantage to the play is this limitation?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Consider the character of Jocasta. Is she a flat charactera generalizedqueen figureor an individual with distinctive traits of personality? Point to speeches or details in the play to back up your opinion.

What will be an ideal response?

spencer.martell · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

It could be argued that the failure to represent these horrors onstage limits their impact on the audience and makes the play less powerful and moving than it would otherwise be; analogously, it might also be maintained that merely hearing about them diminishes the force of the punishments inflicted on Jocasta and Oedipus for their transgressions, and therefore weakens the effectiveness of the plays moral judgments. On the other hand, we might assert that a staged gorefest would throw the play out of balance and distract us from its emotional and thematic emphases, and that any attempt to depict these actionswith all the necessary but distracting fakery involved would inevitably be less horrifying than the scenes that our imaginations can supply.

Answer to Question 2

Jocasta is far from a flat character or a generalized queen figure. Even before she makes her first appearance onstage, we have this rhetorical question from Creon: You rule / this country giving her an equal share / in the government?, to which Oedipus replies, Yes, everything she wants / she has from me (lines 637640). Thus, we see that she desires power and that she wields it as well. Once onstage, she plays an active role in the development of the plot, doing all that she can to reassure Oedipus and keep him focused on his quest for answers. In the end, when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, she reverses course and does what she can to try to dissuade him from continuing on a course that will only lead, as she now realizes, to devastatingly tragic consequences (lines 11231146).

But by far her most significant role is to lead Oedipus into putting no faith in the decrees of the gods. She expresses her disregard of divine prophecy at lines 780788 and again at lines 922928; the latter speech horrifies the chorus through its questioning of the foundations of the societys belief system, as shown in the immediately succeeding choral ode. The culmination comes after the news of the death of Polybus, when Jocasta largely persuades Oedipus that the prophecies of the gods have been proven to be baseless and that one should live by making his own fate as he goes along (lines 10351042).