Sight in Oedipus the King

The Greek drama “Oedipus The King” evidently leads to the unveiling of a tragedy. Oedipus, the protagonist of the play uncovers his tragic birth story and the curse he had been baring his whole life. Oedipus is notorious for his personal insight that helped him defeat Sphinx, which lead him to becoming the king of Thebes. He is admired by the people of Thebes and is considered to be a mature, inelegant and a rational leader. From his birth, his story began with a prophecy that Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. Through out the play numerous people, who tell him of his unknown past, visit Oedipus. Blind to the truth he casts them away until a blind man named Therisis gives a sight of truth to Oedipus. As Oedipus learns the truth he realizes the great evil his life carries. After finding his wife and also mother hung in her bedroom, Oedipus blinds himself with the gold pins that held Jocasta’s robe. Oedipus blind to the truth is finally able to see when the old blind man visits him and tells him the truth about his life. Both metaphorically and physically sight plays a significant role in understanding the irony of a blind man seeing the truth while Oedipus who isn’t blind doesn’t seem to the truth that’s right in front of him.

In the play, Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles, an honourable and admirable Greek king named Oedipus rules the town of Thebes. He is left in mental turmoil and decay as his unknown, corrupt and immoral past is slowly revealed during his quest to find the culprit who murdered King Laius. The newly exposed past suddenly transforms his glory and respect into shame and humiliation. After he learns about his wicked past he stabs his eyes, which lead to his blindness. During the course of the play, references to blindness and vision constantly recur, giving the reader an enhanced and more insightful look into the themes of the play. Some themes that are expressed through these references include truth and knowledge, guilt, and freewill versus

People may be blinded to truth, and may not realize what truth is, even if truth is standing in front of them. They will never see truth becase they are blind to it. In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles it is easy to see how blindness affects the transition of the story. It is said that blind people see “in a different manner” because they sense the world in a totally diferent way, such as Teiresias in the play. Oedipus Rex is a tragedy due to the content the Sophocles, the playwright, decided to include, first, murdering his father, king Laius, then marrying his mother, Jocasta, and ending by blinding himself. Oedipus has been blinded to the truth all his life. Eventually, when he seeks the truth he intentionally loses his physical vision, and

When you think of blindness you think of sight and when you think of ignorance you think of knowledge. Throughout the play Oedipus, sight and blindness imagery is very noticeable, along with ignorance and knowledge. Sophocles creates Oedipus as a character of ignorance, confidence, and good insight. The story starts out as Oedipus is the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta. The oracle told the parents that their son would kill his father and marry his mother. The parents refused to let this happen and sent the servant to pin Oedipus’s feet together and leave him on the mountain to die. The messenger knew this was not right and stepped in immediately to help the poor child. As Oedipus grew older he found out the truth about his life and why certain things happened. Over time, Oedipus's blindness shows him the lack of knowledge he knew about his true life story.

In “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles, being blind and seeing appear to be an important theme throughout this section of reading. On page 719 Teiresias says, “But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind: You can not see the wretchedness of your life” (Sophocles 196-197). This quote shows how Teiresias is blind but is able to see the truth and Oedipus for who he actually is, while Oedipus is able to see but is blind to the truth and who he really is. I find it ironic how Oedipus is so determined to find the person who murdered Laius, yet in the end, he was the murderer. The way that the sentences are broken up between different lines was different than what I am used to reading. Overall, I have found this short story interesting and not

The theme of sight and blindness is undoubtedly important to notice while reading Oedipus the King. The number of times the words “see” or “blind” are in the play make it make it undeniably obvious that they are significant. The theme is developed throughout the dialogue, through characters such as Tiresias and Oedipus, and also directly in the irony of the play. It is important in a play about the truth because almost every character was “blind” to the truth. All of the characters, except one, can physically see, but mentally cannot see the truth.

Sophocles' use of blindness in the play gives the reader/audience more insight into Oedipus' flaws, and Oedipus' flaws are what cause him to fulfill the prophecy. Therefore, Sophocles, in a complexly roundabout way, does in fact hint at the possibility that Oedipus was simply careless. Oedipus has plenty of opportunities to make a better choice; he is just blind to those opportunities because of his flaws.

Oedipus Rex is a play about the way we blind ourselves to painful truths that we can’t bear to see. Physical sight and blindness are used throughout the play, often ironically, as a metaphor for mental sight and blindness. The play ends with the hero Oedipus literally blinding himself to avoid seeing the result of his terrible fate. But as the play demonstrates, Oedipus, the man who killed his father and impregnated his mother, has been blind all along, and is partly responsible for his own blindness.

According to Helen Keller being able to literally see worth nothing when you are mentally blind that is, not being able to see things beyond the surface. The theme of sight versus blindness in the tragic play “Oedipus the king” by Sophocles is a metaphor, with blindness symbolising knowledge, light and truth while sight symbolises ignorance, darkness and lie. This metaphor and irony of sight and blindness is the building block of the play “Oedipus the king”, with central figures Oedipus, King of Thebes and Teiresias the blind prophet. References to sight and blindness, both metaphorical and literal are frequent throughout the play. Usually, the image

In many countries around the world, ignorance carries a considerable weight in politics, households, between friends, and in other vicinities. This ignorance can be depicted as blindness of the mind. In the Greek philosopher Sophocles’ play, Oedipus the King, Oedipus’ family and friends share their blindness in the fact that they love Oedipus and don’t have a desire to know the truth of his ruined past. They keep things from Oedipus and end up withholding the actualities of life from themselves in the process. Sophocles urges the reader that the love people clutch to can cause people to lose sight of the truth. He then expands on the blindness, demonstrating the idea that when the truth comes out, it pulls the love a person feels for another into darkness with it. Love is fragile, and can be easily destroyed by the opening of the eye, causing families to crumble underneath.

One of the many symbols Sophocles portrays throughout the play is sight and blindness. Sight represents how Oedipus had eyesight, but was still “blind” to the truth of himself throughout most of the play. He was both hesitant and unaware of the events that built up to

Blindness plays a two-fold part in Sophocles’ tragedy “Oedipus the King.'; First, Sophocles presents blindness as a physical disability affecting the auger Teiresias, and later Oedipus; but later, blindness comes to mean an inability to see the evil in one’s actions and the consequences that ensue. The irony in this lies in the fact that Oedipus, while gifted with sight, is blind to himself, in contrast to Teiresias, blind physically, but able to see the evil to which Oedipus has fallen prey to. Tragically, as Oedipus gains the internal gift of sight, he discards his outward gift of sight. Sight, therefore, seems to be like good and evil, a person may only choose one.

In a way he was similar to a child, blind to the world around him and carefree. As his story progressed, he began to mature into a teenage stage and become more aware of his surroundings. When Oedipus arrived at the end of his story, he finally began to grow into adulthood, fully conscious of his deeds and able to carry their weight. Oedipus, now visionless, possessed metaphorical sight, no longer blind to the fate the gods had decreed for him. Clearly, Sophocles used vision and blindness to illustrate that wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are not attributes limited to only those with

What is sight? Is it just the ability to recognize one’s surroundings or is there more? Is it knowledge? Is it understanding? Can a blind man see? Can the sighted be blind? And beyond, when the truth is too terrible, do we choose not to see? The phrase "too see" has so very many connotations. One meaning is to know or to understand and the other is based on the physical aspects of things. As humans, we are distracted by the physical world, which causes us to be blinded by the most obvious of truths. Oedipus, the main character in Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, could not see the truth, but the blind man, Teiresias, "saw" it plainly. Sophocles’ uses blindness as a motif in the play Oedipus Rex.

From the very beginning of Oedipus, one can see that the main character of Oedipus is very sure about who he is and where he has come from. One of the most important motifs of the story is the idea of metaphorical blindness, and how Oedipus claims that everyone else around him is blind, and he is the only one that can see. However, what Oedipus soon finds out is that he has no idea who he is, and that all along he has been blind himself. Sophocles makes Oedipus suffer because of the fact that he actually has no idea who he is, and almost avoids figuring it out. It takes a defining moment for it to dawn on Oedipus that he is not who he thought he was. Oedipus’ blindness seems to have been his downfall, but the more prevalent question that