Oedipus

OEDIPUS.

090701 20:57 JOKASTA, (Jocasta) what and when did she know???!!! Why did she kill herself?

OEDIPUS: Too bad he did not immediately go along with Tieresias---had he been mentally calm enuf he would have; but he lacked a high enuf opinion of himself.

Tieresias of course does not mean to hell with the folk of Thebes: Obviously he does not believe the Oracle: the oracle is wrong.

THE ORACLE IS WRONG.

The play by Sophocles comes after the great plague at Athens: Do you citizens want to ask why we deserve it? if so can you compare your worries to this Oedipus myth?

What if Jokasta, upon meeting Oedipus suspected he might be her son? Would she ask if the prophecy is being fulfilled, i e, that if he is going to marry her , he must also be the killer of her late husband the king? Would she be too horrified to speak up? Maybe she resented her husband having killed her son (Oedipus), and over the years had dreamed that the prophecy would indeed be fulfilled. But just dreaming.

And when the Oracle occurs, she opposes it, and we must wonder why?

So when she hangs herself, she achieves the extra purpose of preventing questions.

Indeed, intuitively, Oedipus seeing her dead, must ask these same questions: and how has he been used by one and all, including his own mother, who maybe knew all along she was doing incest --- in a sense, the Sphinx wins at last.

But also the impulsiveness of the Cadmus family, manifest in the behavior of Oedipus at the intersection, and that of the king his father; as well as Oedipus reacting viscerally vs Tieresias.

And altho the action “historically” in the myth, has of course the action of the Sophocles play Antigone following that of Oedipus the King, the plays were written in reverse order, Antigone eleven years earlier. So note the relationship between Creon in Antigone vis a vis Tieresias in that play, and Creon in Oedipus the King vis a vis Tieresias in that play. Tieresias clearly represents reason vs troglodyte reactionary doctrinaire self-slavery. I figure anyway that it is silly to take the Oracle as “gospel”, and further assume everybody accepted the Oracle as sincere as well as wise. More likely the Oracle was despised by Tieresias and considered to be partisan against the Cadmus family, and opportunistically exploiting the plague to get back at the rulers of Thebes in the land we call Ancient Greece (I point out that there were TWO Thebes (one in Greece, one in Egypt)(occasionally people forget this and make themselves look foolish---the Sphinx of Oedipus is of course at the Thebes in Greece)).

Anyway, we have to address the question, what is the morality of Tieresias maintaining a deception of the order of royal incest. And this is poignant to people concerned about Dallas `63.

By the way, USA really does have a plague consequent to the assassination of JFK, whatever may be the facts of the assassination; especially in that bad guys see that even if there were no conspiracy, if there had been, the badc guys would have got away with it, so they may as well persist in their evil ways, whether Watergate or Florida 2000.

Anyway Oedipus should have had the presence of mind to escape the trammels of worry about “public opinion”, and responded cleverly to Tieresias´ immediate recalcitrance. What would have happened if Oedipus had ended the matter by saying to one and all, “I go along with the wise Tieresias, and reject the Oracle”? Would Creon have followed up etc? Then what?