OEDIPUS REX

OEDIPUS REX

This is the first part of a trilogy written (out of order, and over a period of several years) by Sophocles to explicate the fate of the House of Thebes. The other two plays are OEDIPUS AT COLONUS (circa 466 BC) and ANTIGONE (circa 446 BC); OEDIPUS REX was performed circa 430 BC. (Aeschylus play SEVEN AGAINST THEBES completes the story we have of this family and its dynastic rule, and their horrific, yet endlessly fascinating, fates). King Kadmos, founder of the dynasty offended the gods, and the curse laid upon him, his house, and his descendants played out to the fourth and fifth generations, reaching its unbearable climax in this play.

In the beginning, there is a terrible plague in Thebes. The gods have said that there is a terrible wrong that has been committed, and that the evildoers must be found out and punished. As king, Oedipus takes on this responsibility for himself and his city. He inquires into the manner of death of the former king of Thebes, and finds that he himself is the person who has killed him, in a roadside brawl many years ago. He also finds that he, who thought he had avoided the fate forecast for him by the oracle of killing his father and marrying his mother, has not avoided it all, realizing, after questioning the blind prophet Tiresias and the shepherd who was given the queen's son to be abandoned on the mountain, that he was adopted by those he had considered his true parents until that point, and finally, in spite of Jocasta's pleas (who realized the truth before he did, and went in and hanged herself) to drop the matter, continues until he, too, realizes the terrible truth. He has done exactly that. He blinds himself in remorse and sorrow, and leaves the city and kingship the children to Creon, Jocasta's brother, wandering off to seek a place to be and seek forgiveness from the gods.

The question of Fate versus human free will is at the root of the endless fascination exerted by this story upon the ancients, and on many, many others since. It is the triumph of Divine Will and Fate over all of men's attempts to contravene it. Every attempt by Oedipus and his parents to avoid the Divine Pattern predicted by the oracles and foretold at his birth and later, when he consulted the Delphic Oracle about the purpose and direction of his life (as any serious and devout young man in those days might, particularly one destined to become a king). His determination to avoid his fate only insures it. His natural parents attempts to avoid the fate foretold for him at birth only made it the more likely, and, finally, inevitable.

Many civilizations have dealt with the OEDIPUS COMPLEX (the sexual attraction and/or union of mother and son)--some explained this as a divine prerogative; others said it could occur and was understandable and excusable if ended as soon as the connection was revealed. Many societies have forbidden (by custom and social pressure, if not outright proscription) marriage or sexual unions between individuals with a sufficient age difference to make such unions a possibility. Some virtually forbid adoption outside the immediate kin-group, where true physical relationships are known, and such incestuous unions, therefore, are impossible or highly unlikely, short of absolute madness. Our society is one of the few that has dealt with this parent-child attraction in a conscious, personalized way, although the horror with which Freud's revelations' opening of these natural (though forbidden as acts) feelings and fantasies nearly destroyed our civilization, shaking it to its foundations. The ancient Greeks projected their fears, longings, and passionately denied personal consciousness onto Oedipus, saw his Divine punishment (though he was, in fact, an Innocent, in nearly every way), and so received CATHARSIS for their own personal longings, and unacknowledged needs, which might otherwise have destroyed them, their families and, in part, their society and its viability.