Blindness can be defined as missing sight or a simple damage of vision. In resistance. sight is defined as the module or power of seeing. While these are actual definitions. the constructs of sight and sightlessness can hold metaphorical intensions as good. The importance of sight and sightlessness in “Oedipus” create the intriguing secret plan and patterned advance of the drama. When Oedipus is born. his parents are told by an prophet that their kid will kill his male parent and get married his female parent. To queer Oedipus’ destiny. Laius decides that the kid should be killed.
As Jocasta leaves him on a mountaintop to decease. he is rescued and begins to populate a life unknoting the unwanted prognostication. Laius and Jocasta both had eyes to see but they were blind to the cognition that destiny can non be changed. As the drama begins. Oedipus is crowned as male monarch for his humor and intelligence after work outing the Sphinx’s conundrum. He appears to cognize it all and have the intelligence of a baronial adult male. To Oedipus’ bad luck. he lives life blindly but the truth will shortly be unveiled. His ignorance hinders his eyes from seeing and his head from groking his environment.
Tiresias is an appealing character in the drama and gives intending to the overall subject. He is a unsighted prophesier that informs Oedipus of the truth. Tiresius tells Oedipus that he is the liquidator of his ain male parent and married to his female parent. He quotes. “I say: you have been populating unaware in the most horrid familiarity with your nearest and most loving family. immersed in immorality that you can non see. ” Oedipus defensively says. “You have blind eyes. blind ears. and a unsighted encephalon. ” The sarcasm of his sightlessness is that Tiresias is non blind at all within the kingdom of cognition.
He has a clear vision and sight into who Oedipus is and what his hereafter holds. Oedipus is unmindful and can merely see what his eyes choose. The other characters in the drama with physical sight are besides unenlightened to this truth about their male monarch. Towards the terminal of the drama. Oedipus eventually connects each of the pieces. Oedipus has been blind to the fact that Polybus and Merope were non his existent parents. He realizes he was ne’er able to command his destiny or hereafter and can non penetrate the life he has been populating.
New cognition of his murdering of his male parent and matrimony to his female parent. traumatise Oedipus. Unable to get by. he blinds himself by jabing out his eyes. He screams. “Eyes. now you will non. no. ne’er see the immorality I suffered. the evil I caused. You will see blackness- where one time were lives you should ne’er hold lived to see. yearned- for faces you so long failed to cognize. ” Oedipus realizes the atrocious life he has been populating and is no longer sightless to the truth. The sarcasm can be seen as Oedipus is now literally blind. but to the full acquainted with who he is and what he has done.
