Oedipus the King

With near perfect timing, we have finished Oedipus the King right before I leave for vacation. I'll be back on June 2, when I plan to jump right into the challenging Symposium for a good old love fest.

Now is the chance to get a head start on the book, if you'd like.

Oedipus discovers that the prophecy is true. As if killing your father and having children with your mother wasn't enough torture, he then loses his wife/mother to suicide and blinds himself with the pins that held together her clothes.

His moral blindness is replaced by physical blindness, and in the final lines, he prepares to leave Thebes for good.

How ironic that this master of riddles (he solved the riddle of the Phoenix before the play started) is ruined by another riddle he forces himself to solve instead of living in ignorance.

Oedipus has become so desperate to learn the truth and destroy his family that his behavior is sickening. He tortures and threatens to kill the old herdsman for trying to protect him from the truth.

As we saw in The Odyssey, it seems that the Greek authors try to make those who get punished less sympathetic. Remember Odysseus' gloating when he escaped the Cyclops? He was the hero, but he did deserve some punishment for that behavior.

I don't wish Oedipus' blinding and expulsion from society, but he does have a reprimand coming.

As with so much else we are exposed to, the question of paternity is a vital theme in Oedipus the King.

"What, was Polybus not my father?" (1017) an appalled Oedipus asks the messenger who is helping to seal his doom.

Despite Jocasta's warnings, Oedipus must get to the bottom of this riddle that is painfully revealing itself. The drought plaguing his kingdom and the cure for that plague were forgotten hundreds of lines ago, and now, the true focus of this play is the need to discover one's lineage.

The plot of Oedipus the King is so familiar that new twists as I read come across as redundancies. It's difficult to imagine the shock of hearing for the first time that the prophecy might be true.

I imagine it's like hearing for the first time (sorry for this redundancy) that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. I was 3 when I went to see that movie, and my father took me several times because I kept crying at the beginning of the ultimate fight scene, moments before that climactic "Luke, I am your father." So I guess I ruined that one, too.

Jocasta enters in such a graceful and queenly way, I feel worst of all for her. Instantly, she puts an end to the bickering between Oedipus and Creon:

"For shame! Why have you raised this foolish squabbling

brawl? Are you not ashamed to air your private

griefs when the country's sick? Go in, you, Oedipus,

and you, too, Creon, into the house. Don't magnify

your nothing troubles." (634-638)

As we plug along through these books, I leap to the keyboard when I come across one of those themes that has never left literature, life, politics, etc.

Oh, Oedipus. It's as if you landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a "Drought Ended" sign waiting to great you. Teiresias warned you. He didn't seem to have any other motivation in the matter.

I'm a compulsive reader. I carry a man purse wherever I go so I can have a book with me at all times. I read on the subway. I read during my lunch break. I read sitting under a rack of clothes while my wife shops at Ann Taylor.

But the most enjoyable reading I do is when there is no one in the house, and the shades are opened on the backyard and the only noises are the crackling of the heating system coming to life and the occasional bird beating its wings near the window.

The testy interaction between Oedipus and Teiresias is so much fun. They lace into each other in a way that perfectly sets up the rest of the action.

"You would provoke a stone! Tell us, you villain,/ tell us, and do not stand there quietly/ unmoved and balking at the issue," (335-337) Oedipus says when Teiresias is reluctant to ruin what the king imagines is his good thing.

Goaded into spoiling the party, Teiresias responds, "You blame my temper but you do not see/ your own that lives within you." (338-339)

The blind seer has to be my favorite character in all of Greek mythology. It's not just his ability to see the future and skills at telling it like it is. It's also his somewhat mysterious origins, like those of a masked wrestler.

Already, I feel bad for Oedipus. He's a great king. We know because he tells us so in the eighth line. Yet his kingdom is ravished by the cruelties of nature.

People are starving and ill, and they don't know why until Creon returns from visiting with Apollo.

It turns out, the misery is going to go on until Oedipus kicks out the man who murdered Laius, the former king.

Who did it? How are they going to find him when there's only one witness, and he's no help?

Since we are reading only one of the three plays, the introduction isn't all that informative. But it did get me thinking about my love for trilogies and my loathing of tetralogies.

The list of threes that I love, Oedipus, Star Wars, U.S.A by John Dos Passos, goes on and on, but the movies, books and other art forms that travel beyond three seem to wear out their welcome (Star Wars, Indiana Jones ... ). Maybe it's just that it's impossible to consistently create masterpieces, especially in times where cultural tastes are so fickle.

Despite all the turmoil and death - lots and lots of death - The Odyssey is, in the end, a happy story about a hero's homecoming.

Not the case with our next book, Oedipus the King. I've read the Oedipus trilogy several times for class, but it has been a while since I last spent time with the doomed king.

Tomorrow, we will start Oedipus the King. The book is (thankfully for some, I'm sure) much shorter than The Odyssey. I will be posting less frequently - about twice a week, maybe more - so that you won't get sick of me commenting on every single page of the play.