{"id":445,"date":"2022-05-07T02:41:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-07T02:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=445"},"modified":"2022-05-07T02:41:50","modified_gmt":"2022-05-07T02:41:50","slug":"blindness-in-oedipus-the-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=445","title":{"rendered":"Blindness in Oedipus the King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">The exchange between Oedipus and Tiresias in lines 299-462 of <em>Oedipus the King<\/em> reveals several comparisons that center on a theme of blindness. It is evident in the world and also through the text that there can be varying degrees of blindness, or visual impairment. Words to describe one\u2019s vision often involve ideas of light, darkness, clarity, or haze, and many other terms in between. Interestingly, these words are also frequently linked to the concept of truth, as the term \u201ctruth\u201d is often defined by words pertaining to vision. While Tiresias is the manifestation of <em>physical<\/em> blindness in the drama, he demonstrates great insight and understanding of the truth. Contrarily Oedipus, although possessing perfect physical vision, represents a <em>spiritual<\/em> impairment which mars his ability to recognize the truth. It appears that in this text, Sophocles uses the juxtaposition between the physical blindness of Tiresias and the spiritual blindness of Oedipus as a dramatic tool to emphasize the devastation of a spiritually deficient soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After hearing the truth from the seer\u2019s mouth, Oedipus responds in anger, defense, and accusation; \u201cI\u2019ll lay out all I see going on here. It\u2019s plain to me you hatched the scheme and did the deed\u2026\u201d (Sophocles 344-346). Here, all that Oedipus could \u201csee going on\u201d is very clearly false to the audience and to the spiritually sound prophet, which underscores the internal blindness to the truth that Oedipus suffers. Tiresias responds to his anger by saying, \u201cYou don\u2019t know that you live in deepest shame with those most near to you\u2014you\u2019re sunk in evils you don\u2019t see\u201d (366-367). Here, the physically blind prophet plainly tells Oedipus that he is the one who is truly blind, as blindness to the truth holds a greater weight in the light of eternity than does physical blindness. This point that he makes also calls attention to the idea of spiritual deficiency and how it can lead to spiritual decline. Oedipus\u2019 response emphasizes this further, \u201cFor you [truth] fails, because you\u2019re blind\u2014in ears and mind and eye\u201d (370-371). Here, the very man who had previously lauded Tiresias, saying \u201cin him, alone among men, truth is inborn,\u201d now opposes him and accuses him of falseness (298). As Tiresias departs, the audience is well aware of the truth, seeing the difference between the physically blind and the spiritually blind, and able to morally reason between them from a place of omniscience. It is this place where a listener can gain insight into the value of spiritual vision and contrast it with the devastation of king Oedipus who was blind to it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph\">March 5, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Sophocles. &#8220;Oedipus the King.&#8221; <em>The<\/em> <em>Greek<\/em> <em>Plays<\/em>: <em>Sixteen<\/em> <em>Plays<\/em> <em>by<\/em> <em>Aeschylus<\/em>, <em>Sophocles, and Euripides<\/em>. Edited by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm. Modern Library Publishers, New York, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The exchange between Oedipus and Tiresias in lines 299-462 of Oedipus the King reveals several comparisons that center on a theme of blindness. It is evident in the world and also through the text that there can be varying degrees of blindness, or visual impairment. Words to describe one\u2019s vision often involve ideas of light,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[397,385,386,419,80],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-analyses","tag-blindness","tag-oedipus","tag-oedipus-the-king","tag-tiresias","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}