Author Question: What are your feelings toward him as the play ends? What will be an ideal ... (Read 39 times)

Engineer · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

What are your feelings toward him as the play ends?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

For what reason does Oedipus blind himself? What meaning, if any, do youfind in his choice of a surgical instrument?

What will be an ideal response?

Carliemb17 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Its hard to imagine that there would be any reader of the play who would not feel sympathetic toward Oedipus at the conclusion of the play. Those who see him as a blameless victim, a plaything of the gods, will of course continue to be positively inclined toward him. Thoseif there are any such readerswho have been completely alienated by his arrogance and recklessness will doubtless feel that he has been sufficiently, if not excessively, punished for his transgressions. And that majority of readers who have seen him throughout as a noble and accomplished figure undermined by serious flaws will be moved by his newfound humility and acceptance of personal responsibility for his actions and their consequences.

Answer to Question 2

His motives in blinding himself are addressed several times in the final pages of the play. The second messenger tells the chorus of the horrors he has just witnessed in the palace:

When he saw her, he cried out fearfully and cut the dangling noose. Then, as she lay, poor woman, on the ground, what happened after, was terrible to see. He tore the brooches the gold chased brooches fastening her robe away from her and lifting them up high dashed them on his own eyeballs, shrieking out such things as: they will never see the crime I have committed or had done upon me Dark eyes, now in the days to come look on forbidden faces, do not recognize
those whom you long forwith such imprecations
he struck his eyes again and yet again with the brooches. (lines 13341347)
When the self-mutilated Oedipus emerges from the palace and the chorus asks what spirit urged you to it?, he replies: Why should I see / whose vision showed me nothing sweet to see? . . . / What can I see to love? (lines 13971405). Moments later, he elaborates further on this theme:
I do not know with what eyes I could look upon my father when I die and go under the earth, nor yet my wretched mother those two to whom I have done things deserving worse punishment than hanging. Would the sight of children, bred as mine are, gladden me? No, not these eyes, never. And my city, its towers and sacred places of the Gods, of these I robbed my miserable self when I commanded all to drive him out, the criminal since proved by God impure and of the race of Laius.
To this guilt I bore witness against myself with what eyes shall I look upon my people? No. If there were a means to choke the fountain of hearing I would not have stayed my hand from locking up my miserable carcase, seeing and hearing nothing; it is sweet
to keep our thoughts out of the range of hurt. (lines 14301448)
He has blinded himself to avoid more pain from the horrid sights he has witnessed, and to spare himself the pain of facing his wronged parents in the afterlife and his misbegotten but innocent daughters here and now, and also because he feels polluted and unworthy to look upon the sweet world around him. His physical blindness is in a way emblematic of the moral blindness in which he was previously enveloped, in direct contrast to Teiresias, who is physically sightless but possessed of penetrating insight.
His use of Jocastas brooches could be explained away as his having simply seized the nearest things to hand in the passion of the moment, but it might also be interpreted as his inflicting upon himself a sort of retribution for the shame and degradation he has blindly inflicted upon her.