When I asked my friends who took World Lit last year what Oedipus Rex was "about," this was the consensual reponse:
"This guy who has sex with his mom."
So I began reading the play thinking, "How can I possibly relate to this? First off, I'm not a man. I'm not a king (but close). I'm definitely not familiar with incest...this play will have nothing to do with me."
But as my eyes made their way over the final words of the final scene, I realized –
Oedipus Rex has everything to do with me.
I consider myself lucky. I like to think that I have a wonderful life and, if I keep going the way I'm going, that it will stay wonderful forever. Then I read this story about Oedipus, a magnanimous man who has used intelligence and a natural sense of nobility to work his way to the top, a lucky guy, who, in one bad day, has everything come crashing down around him.
The moral of Oedipus Rex is not, "If you sleep with your mother, bad things will happen to you." What it tells us is that nothing is guaranteed. We can work hard and be nice to the neighbors and keep a steady job and work in a soup kitchen and be happy and then, in a single moment, lose everything. But there's nothing we can do. We are destined to fulfill a certain fate, and no matter how hard we work or how nice we are to the neighbors or how steady our job is or how often we work in a soup kitchen or how happy we are, nothing can change the mind of fate.
So there are two ways we can take the message that Oedipus Rex leaves us with – one, do absolutely nothing because...what's the use? We have no control over what's going to happen to us, so if it's crappy, we might as well not waste our time trying to have a good life. Or two (the way I see it), just keep living the best you can and take no moment for granted because nothing in life is certain. Oedipus Rex is not a pessimistic story. It just so happens that Oedipus didn't have the nicest of fates, but that doesn't mean that happy endings are impossible. Sophocles is just saying, "Listen, your life might be good, and maybe it'll stay that way, but be careful not to count your chickens before they're hatched, alright?"
So just because I don't have children who also happen to be my siblings doesn't mean that I can't learn anything from Oedipus. In fact, despite the macabre nature of his end, I walk away from Oedipus Rex with a greater appreciation for how wonderful my life is but keeping in mind how many eggs are still left unhatched.
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2 comments:
perhaps as his fate unfolds, so does his true nobility. Is a person noble if he or she never is put into a situation that requires his or her true nobility to appear? I'm not sure that looking at fate and free will really has a purpose. The knowing of his true fate requires his nobility. His nobility was hidden by his ignorance. Ironic, yes? There is a singer songwriter who has a line in a song: "If I get rid of my demons, my angels may be lost as well."
I think this is a great take on Oedipus Rex, that even if you don't believe in fate, you know nothing is guaranteed. My question would be what is the result of following that first path; what is different about the ends of these two choices? Does doing good mean that you turn out noble like Oedipus? If you did as you pleased would you end up more like Iago?
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