Oedipus the King and its Connection to Modern Life - Assignment Example

Oedipus the King and its Connection to Modern Life Mythology is a collection of stories that reflect the basic elements of the human condition in a given culture. In the stories told, insight can be gained as to expectations for universal, social or individual insight. Universal insights are those that apply to the general human condition, and remain debatable as to whether or not these can actually exist. Cultures around the globe can be generally grouped under basic religious approaches, but remain sufficiently different in details to make it nearly impossible for people of all cultures to interpret the stories in a similar way every time. Social insights are much more prevalent as each culture is able to pull out those elements of a story that has specific meaning within that culture. Individual insight is generally specific to the main character and comprises the thrust of the story, but is told in such a way that these insights are more broadly applicable to the social, religious and universal realms as understood by the society producing the story. In relaying important cultural and societal ideologies, myths are also useful learning tools for the young people of society as they begin to learn what is expected of them and the consequences if they fail to behave according to plan. Within Sophocles play Oedipus the King, some of the messages that become clear are the individual’s dependence upon others and the proper order and responsibilities of family relationships. The sexual content of the play is graphically discussed in several critiques of the play. Looking at the theories of Sigmund Freud is only the start of this type of discussion with the ideas of how Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. Other critics take it further mentioning how other elements of the play, elements not generally considered by the average reader to represent sexual ideas, contribute to the strange interrelationships of the characters in the story. Frank Bernhard (1992), for example, focuses on the scene in which Oedipus discovers Jacosta’s body within the palace as a complicated microcosm of their relationship. In this scene, he points to the doors of the palace as Jacosta’s labia and Oedipus’ intentions as typically male. “He intends to thrust his sword into her offending womb, which ironically would emulate the sexual act one last time. When he finds the queen dead by her own hand, however, a strange reversal occurs. Jocasta becomes the newborn” (Bernhard, 1992: 5). In delivering her from the ceiling by cutting her down, Oedipus becomes the father once again and must face his own complicity. He addresses this by stabbing out his eyes with the pins from her dress, effecting another role reversal as Jocasta foully penetrates him as he has penetrated her. These unnatural reversals are a natural conclusion to the play in which a string of tragedies is all seen to come from similar unnatural family relationships that were started by Laius and Jocasta. Although the play opens at a point when Oedipus is already a full-grown man, king of his nation, husband and father of four mostly grown children, it is clear from the action of the play that he could not have achieved this status without the aid of others. This emphasizes the importance of family and relationships to bring about positive results. As the play makes clear, Oedipus was born to Jocasta and Laius but Laius was warned early on that he should avoid having children because he was destined to have a son who would kill him. This is the foundation of the play as Laius ordered the infant hobbled and left exposed. Oedipus was only saved because of the kind-heartedness of a pair of shepherds – one who was ordered to leave him exposed and one who carried him home to Corinth to present to the childless ruling family there. Without these two figures, Oedipus would have died as a child and without these two figures, his true identity might have been forever unknown. “To them he owes his life: decades ago the Theban slave, finding himself unable to obey his orders to expose the baby on Mount Cithaeron, handed Oedipus to his fellow-shepherd from Corinth, who then passed him on to the Corinthian royal house. To them Oedipus also owes his sufferings, past, present, and future … Oedipus is indeed trapped by these two old men” (Revermann, 2003: 789). Taunts thrown at him as a young man in Corinth caused him to seek the counsel of the oracle and this, eventually led him to Thebes in his attempt to avoid his foretold fate. Having been raised in the castle at Corinth, Oedipus naturally believes the prophecy indicates he is destined to kill the father he loves – Polybus of Corinth – and he abandons his family rather than risk their safety. Thus, both Laius and Oedipus have broken the natural bonds of family – one by ordering the death of his own infant son and the other by abandoning his family without notice. Because of this broken bond, both men are doomed to suffer from familial failures. This type of broken family bond also affects other characters in the play such as Jocasta. The queen of Thebes has already suffered the mysterious murder of her first husband, Laius, after she had already suffered the murder of her infant son by the time she marries Oedipus. Her grief over these incidents seems to indicate a broken family bond between herself and her first husband following the birth of her first son. This is indicated by the way in which she attempts to comfort Oedipus following the disturbing words given him by the prophet Tiresias. Although she is trying to tell Oedipus that the words of prophets are not to be believed by offering Laius as an example, she digresses a bit in her speech to assign blame to her former husband for her son’s death: “my son - / he wasn’t three days old and the boy’s father / fastened his ankles, had a henchman fling him away / on a barren, trackless mountain” (790-93). Within these lines, Jocasta reveals the blame she still assigns to Laius for killing their baby and the grief she still feels for the baby’s loss. They also reveal her denial of having taken any part in the decision even though she later admits that it was she who had to willingly hand the boy over to the servant. Later in the play she refers to her son as a “poor defenseless thing” (946), again referring to her infant son in a way that assigns little or no actual affection or concern to the father. “She appears to entertain the desire for her son to have lived, so that he might actually have had the opportunity to fulfill the prophecy” (Cox, 1999: 68). Her reversal of grief for Laius at the end of the play reveals her own complicit nature in the destruction of the family bonds and justifies the punishment she receives. This is further complicated by her obvious attraction to her son, however unwittingly, and her willingness to bear him children as evidenced by the four children she is about to leave orphaned, again breaking family bonds by committing suicide. Perhaps more troubling than the broken family bonds within the play are the unnatural family bonds that become apparent as the action unfolds. There is the obvious unnatural relationship between Oedipus and Jocasta. This mother-son/husband-wife relationship can be somewhat forgiven in that Oedipus at least had no reason to suspect their true connection. Jocasta may be somewhat more at fault in that she would have been aware of the injuries that had been afflicted upon her infant son that had left scars on the grown man; however, she might also be forgiven in her conviction that her son was murdered in infancy. Yet this unnatural attraction of the parent for the child is carried forward through Oedipus at the end of the play. This connection is made clear by Christopher Nassaar (1997) as he discusses the final wishes of Oedipus as the play comes to a close. What is significant about these wishes is that Oedipus realizes the taint of his broken family relationships will pursue his children forever, but he only expresses concern for the welfare of his daughters, dismissing his sons almost out of hand. “It is important to note that the special concern of Oedipus for the daughters is not simply or even primarily social … He continues to cling to them irrationally until the last line of the play and uses the social dimension simply as a mask to hide his deep and sexually tinged preference for them” (Nassaar, 1997: 188). In this, he is continuing the family tradition of broken and unnatural ties and thus sets up tragedy for the next generation. The concept that the story of Oedipus the King is intended to convey important messages regarding appropriate family behavior is well-documented. In every element of the story, it is emphasized that no one will be able to escape the taint of the patricide/incest that has been committed regardless of how innocent the parties might have been. The play “has spoken to human beings across the ages and it recognizes both that different individuals show certain regularities in their modes of relationship and their conduct and that these tendencies are often familial, contributing significantly to the events marking family stories and traditions” (Gillett & Hankey, 2005: 270). What this recognizes is that the play attempts to demonstrate, in story format, what happens when an individual engages in unnatural family behavior such as attempting to kill a child or giving in to inappropriate attractions. The inappropriate behavior starts with the original mother and father and continues down the line into the children as is demonstrated in analyses of Oedipus’ feelings toward his daughters. Throughout the story, the main character is given a prophecy upon his birth that suggests what his fate might be which seems to be strongly rooted in the unnatural emotions presumably already present within the parents. Although Oedipus is typically considered the guilty character in the play, he is merely continuing the patterns set for him by his parents and the prophecy of his birth. Viewing the story from a modern perspective, it seems possible that the prophet was capable of seeing the true nature of the parents upon the birth of the son – the inherent jealousy of the father and the overly doting nature of the mother – which would lead to inevitable discord. This seems to be a reasonable conclusion given the hatred Oedipus acknowledges sprang up immediately between himself and Laius on the road. However, this unnatural approach to the family relationship had already poisoned the son and would inevitably poison the children born of incest. That this is the case is brought forward by the other characters in the play as Jocasta participates in incest in her attraction to her son and her son demonstrates an unnatural attraction to his daughter-sisters. All of the elements of the play contribute to this idea that there is something unnatural in the family that must be corrected through the complete reversal of roles discovered in the ending scenes. This brings the play into the realm of the universal as we continue to struggle today with questions of family relationships and issues of natural as compared to foster parents. Because of fundamental elements and concentration on a general human behavior characteristic, the myth has the ability to transcend superficial cultural elements and reach to a broader audience. Works Cited Cox, Michael W. “Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.” The Explicator. Research Library. Vol. 57, N. 2, (Winter 1999). Frank, Bernhard. “Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.” The Explicator. Research Library. Vol. 51, N. 1, (Fall 1992). Gillett, Grant & Robin Hankey. “Oedipus the King: Temperement, Character and Virtue.” Philosophy and Literature. ProQuest Religion. Vol. 29, N. 2, (October 2005). Nassaar, Christopher S. “Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.” The Explicator. Research Library. Vol. 55, N. 4, (Summer 1997). Revermann, Martin. “Spatio-temporal Dynamics in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.” University of Toronto Quarterly. North York: Vol. 72, I. 4, (Fall 2003). Sophocles. Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra. Oxford World’s Classics. Ed. Edith Hall. Oxford University Press, 1998. Read More