What is the
Tragic Flaw of Oedipus
An oracle informs Laius of Delphi that he
can only save the city of Thebes from certain destruction if he never
fathers a child. The prophecy further predicts that if he fathers a son, the
boy will murder him and take his wife for his own. Laius takes the prophecy
seriously, vowing never to father a child with Jocasta, his wife.
One night, his impulsive natur overcomes
him, and he indulges in too much wine. While drunk, he lays with Jocasta, and
she becomes pregnant with Oedipus. Horrified and afraid of the prophecy, Laius
cripples the baby by driving a pin through his feet. He then orders Jocasta to
take the child into the wilderness and abandon it.
Jocasta, unable to bring herself to
murder her own child in cold blood, gives the infant to a wandering shepherd.
The shepherd, unwilling to shed innocent blood, takes the baby to nearby
Corinth, where the childless Polybus and Merope, king and queen of the
region, gladly take him in to raise as their own.
What
is Oedipus’ tragic flaw, or hamartia?
It is hubris or pride. Upon reaching
adulthood and hearing the prophecy that he will murder his father and take his
mother as his own wife, he attempts to flee the fate the gods have laid out
before him by leaving Corinth. Unknowingly,
he places himself upon the path that will lead to the prophecy coming true.
How
is Oedipus a tragic hero?
Let’s break it down. In his work,
Aristotle wrote that a tragic hero needs to elicit three responses in the
audience; pity, fear, and catharsis. For a character to be a tragic hero
and have a hamartia, or tragic flaw, they need to meet these three
requirements. The first requirement is that the hero must gain the pity of
the audience. They are faced with some hardship that makes them seem even
nobler than they might otherwise have been perceived.
Oedipus begins life born to a man who
first tortures and mutilates him and then tries to have him murdered. A
helpless infant who survives such a difficult start immediately grabs the
audience’s attention. His loyalty to his adoptive parents, Polybus and Merope,
brings even more sympathy from the audience. Unaware of his origins as an
adopted son, Oedipus sets off on a difficult journey away from his comfortable
home in Corinth to Thebes to protect them. By his noble birth and courage, he
is portrayed as one who deserves the audience’s pity.
The second requirement is a sense of fear
in the audience. As the play unfolds, the audience becomes aware of Oedipus’
tragic past and the questions about his future. They begin to fear him. Knowing
the gods and the prophecy are set against him, they wonder what could happen
next for this man who saved Thebes. With the city besieged by a plague, the
noble Oedipus’ fatal flaw is his unwillingness to accept what the prophecy has
declared as his fate.
Finally, the requirement of catharsis.
Catharsis is a bit more difficult to pin down, but it essentially expresses the
satisfaction the audience experiences with the ending of the play at hand. In
Oedipus’ case, his blinding himself, rather than actual suicide, left him the
suffering hero who cannot die to escape the consequences of his actions.
Suffering is Oedipus’ natural state following the horror of what has
transpired. Since the tragedy was brought about by his lack of knowledge
of his own identity, the audience is moved to pity for his fate rather than his
deliberate choice.
Incomplete
Oracles and The Choices of Hubris
The trouble with the oracles given both
to Laius and Oedipus was that the information was incomplete. Laius is told
that his son will kill him and take his wife, but he is not told that it was
his own murderous intent that will trigger the series of events. Oedipus was
given the same prophecy but was not told his true origins, causing him to
return to his home and fulfill the prophecy unknowingly.
What
was Oedipus tragic flaw, truly?
Was it hubris, the pride of believing he
could outwit the gods? Or was it a lack of awareness? Had Oedipus given way to
the man in the wood as he was traveling, rather than falling on him and killing
him and his guards, he would not have been accused of murdering
his father. Had he practiced some humility
after defeating the sphinx and freeing Thebes, he might not have taken
Jocasta’s hand in marriage, thus cursing himself to marrying his own mother.
However, all of this could have been
avoided had the prophecies provided more information to their recipients. There
is a good deal of room for discussion about who was truly responsible for Oedipus
Rex tragic flaw.
Oedipus’
Journey
While the play’s chronological events
unfolded one way, the information is revealed in a series of events and
revelations that lead Oedipus to realize, far too late, what he has done. As
the play begins, Oedipus is already king and seeks to end a plague that
has befallen Thebes.
He sends for the blind prophet, Tiresias,
to help find the answers he so desperately needs. The prophet informs him that
the only way to end the plague is to seek the murderer of Laius, the previous
king. Oedipus, wanting to take his kingly duties seriously, begins trying
to unravel the mystery.
He questions the prophet further but
finds Tiresias unwilling to speak. Frustrated with the lack of
information, he accuses Tiresias of conspiring with his brother-in-law Creon against
him. The prophet informs him that the murderer will turn out to be a brother to
his own children and son of his wife.
This revelation causes a great deal of
unease and leads to bickering between Creon and Oedipus. Jocasta, arriving and
hearing the fight, scoffs at the prophecy, telling Oedipus that Laius was
killed by robbers in the wood, despite a prophecy that predicted his own
son would murder him.
A Father’s Death
Oedipus is distressed by the description
of Laius’ death, recalling his own encounter that was eerily similar to what
Jocasta describes. He sends for the only surviving member of the party and
questions him sharply. He gains little new information from the
interrogation, but a messenger arrives to inform him that Polybus has died and
that Corinth seeks him as their new leader.
Jocasta is relieved at this. If Polybus
is dead of natural causes, then surely Oedipus can not carry out the
prophecy of killing his own father. He still fears the second half of the
prophecy, that he will take his own mother for a wife, and Merope still lives.
Overhearing the conversation, the messenger delivers news he hopes will cheer
the king; that Merope is not his true mother, nor that Polybus was his true
father.
Against Jocasta’s wishes, Oedipus sends
for the shepherd the messenger mentions and demands to be told the story of his
origins. Jocasta, who has begun to suspect the truth, flees to the castle
and refuses to hear more. Under the threat of torture, the shepherd admits that
he took the infant from the house of Laius on orders from Jocasta. Taking pity
and feeling the terrible prophecy could not come true if the infant were raised
well away from his homeland, he delivered him to Polybus and Merope.
The
Tragedy of Oedipus Rex
Upon hearing the shepherd’s words,
Oedipus becomes convinced of the truth. He has fulfilled the prophecy
unknowingly. Jocasta is his own mother, and Laius, the man he killed as he
entered Thebes, was his true father.
As Oedipus is overcome with horror, he
runs to the castle, where he finds even more horrors. Jocasta, in a fit of
grief, has hanged herself. In grief and self-loathing, Oedipus takes the
pins from her dress and puts out his own eyes.
Creon’s
Rule
Oedipus begs Creon to kill him and end
the plague on Thebes, but Creon, perhaps recognizing Oedipus’s basic innocence
in the matter, refuses. Oedipus relinquishes his rule to Creon, making him the
new king of Thebes.
He will live the remainder of his life
broken and grieving. Though born of incest, his sons and daughters are innocent
of any wrongdoing and will live on. Oedipus Rex ends as a true tragedy,
with the Hero having lost everything. Oedipus failed to overcome the will of
the gods. Without knowing, he fulfilled the terrible prophecy before the play
even began.
A
Perfect Tragedy
The hamartia of Oedipus lay in his lack
of knowledge of his own origins, combined with the hubris of believing he
could, by his own actions and will, overcome the rule of the gods. The
true tragedy of Oedipus was that he was doomed from the very start. Before he
was even born, he was doomed to murder his father and marry his mother. The
punishment the gods declared on his father was inescapable. Even Oedipus’
innocence could not protect him from this terrible fate.
Was the downfall of Oedipus truly the
fault of the gods? Can the blame be laid at the feet of his impulsive,
reckless, violent father? Or was the flaw in Oedipus himself, who tried to flee
and prevent what had been prophesized? Even Jocasta shares in the blame,
ignoring her husband’s wishes and allowing his infant son to live. Her
unwillingness to murder the infant was noble, but she gave him away to
strangers, leaving his fate to the cruelty of the gods.
There were three lessons in Sophocles’
play. The first was that the will of the gods is absolute. Humanity can
not defeat what has been determined for their life. The second was that
believing one might circumvent fate is foolishness. Hubris will bring about
only more pain. Finally, the sins of the father can, and often do, carry
down to the children. Laius was a violent, impulsive, reckless man, and his
behavior condemned not only himself to die but sentenced his son to a terrible
fate as well.
From
the time he took advantage of Chryssipus to the attempted murder of his own
son, he exercised poor judgment. His willingness to sacrifice an innocent life
to prevent the prophecy sealed his and Oedipus’ fate.
Fate vs Free
Will
The ancient
Greeks believed that their gods could see the future, and that certain people
could access this information. Prophets or seers, like blind Tiresias, saw visions
of things to come. Oracles, priests who resided at the temples of gods—such as
the oracle to Apollo at Delphi—were also believed to be able to interpret the
gods' visions and give prophecies to people who sought to know the future.
During the fifth century B.C.E., however, when Sophocles was writing his plays,
intellectuals within Athenian society had begun to question the legitimacy of
the oracles and of the traditional gods. Some of this tension is plain to see
in Oedipus Rex, which hinges on two
prophecies. The first is the prophecy received by King Laius of Thebes that he
would have a son by Queen Jocasta who
would grow up to kill his own father. The second is the prophecy that Oedipus
received that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius, Jocasta,
and Oedipus all work to prevent the prophecies from coming to pass, but their
efforts to thwart the prophecies are what actually bring the prophecies to
completion.
This raises a
question at the heart of the play: does Oedipus have any choice in the matter?
He ends up killing his father and marrying his mother without knowing it—in
fact, when he is trying to avoid doing
these very things. Does he have free will—the ability to choose his own path—or
is everything in life predetermined? Jocasta argues that the oracles are a sham
because she thinks the prediction that her son would kill her husband never
came to pass. When she finds out otherwise, she kills herself. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus has fulfilled his terrible
prophecy long ago, but without knowing it. He has already fallen
into his fate. One could argue that he does have
free will, however, in his decision to pursue the facts about his past, despite
many suggestions that he let it go. In this argument, Oedipus's destruction
comes not from his deeds themselves but from his persistent efforts to learn
the truth, through which he reveals the true nature of those terrible deeds.
Oedipus himself makes a different argument at the end of the play, when he says
that his terrible deeds were fated, but that it was he alone who chose to blind
himself. Here, Oedipus is arguing that while it is impossible to avoid one's
fate, how you respond to your fate is a matter of free will.
Guilt and
Shame
The play
begins with a declaration from the oracle at Delphi: Thebes is suffering
because the person guilty of the murder of King Laius has not been brought to
justice. Oedipus sets
himself the task of discovering the guilty party—so guilt, in the legal sense,
is central to Oedipus Rex. Yet ultimately
it is not legal guilt but the emotion of guilt, of remorse for having done
something terrible, that drives the play.
After all, one
can argue that neither Oedipus nor Jocasta are guilty in a legal sense. They
committed their acts unknowingly. Yet their overwhelming feelings of guilt and
shame for violating two of the basic rules of civilized humanity—the taboos
against incest and killing one's parents—are enough to make Jocasta commit
suicide and to make Oedipus blind himself violently.
Sight vs
blindness
When Oedipus publicly declares his intention to solve the mystery of King
Laius's murder, he says, "I'll start again—I'll bring it all to light
myself." Oedipus's vision and intelligence have made him a great king of
Thebes—he solved the riddle of the Sphinx and revitalized the city. But he is
blind to the truth about his own life. It takes the blind prophet, Tiresias, to point out his ignorance and to plant the
first seeds of doubt in Oedipus's mind. When Oedipus mocks Tiresias's
blindness, Tiresias predicts that Oedipus himself will soon be blind. And
indeed, when Oedipus learns the full story—that he has killed his father and
married his mother—he gouges out his eyes. He learns the nature of fate and the
power of the gods, but at a great cost. And though he is blinded, he has
learned to see something he could not see before.
Finding out the truth
The terrible
deeds that are Oedipus's undoing actually took place long before the play begins. King Laius
has been dead for many years, Oedipus has ruled for some time, and his marriage
to Jocasta has produced four children. They might have all remained happy in
their ignorance had the plague not come to Thebes and the oracle not commanded
that the murderer of Laius be found. Good king that he is, Oedipus swears he
will find the murderer. Every step of the way, people are reluctant to speak
and try to tell him that it would be better if the past were left alone. Creon suggests that they discuss the oracle behind closed doors, not
in front of everyone, but Oedipus wants to show that he is open to the truth
and keeps no secrets from his people. Tiresias refuses to say what he knows, and only
speaks when he has been insulted and accused of treachery. Jocasta begs Oedipus
to cease his investigations. The old shepherd gives Oedipus the final pieces of the
puzzle only when threatened with death. In his desire to seek out the truth and
save his people from the plague, Oedipus becomes his own prosecutor, and then
his own judge and punisher.
Action vs Reflection
In his quest
for truth, Oedipus is a man
of constant action. When the priests come to
ask for his help, he has already dispatched Creon to the
oracle to find out what the gods suggest. When the chorus suggests
that he consult Tiresias, Oedipus has
already sent for him. Oedipus decides quickly and acts quickly—traits his
audience would have seen as admirable and in the best tradition of Athenian
leadership. But Oedipus's tendency to decide and act quickly also leads him
down a path to his own destruction. He becomes convinced that Tiresias and
Creon are plotting to overthrow him, though he has no evidence to prove it.
At several
stages where he might have paused to reflect on the outcome of his
actions—where he might have sifted through the evidence before him and decided
not to pursue the question further, or not in such a public way—he forges
onward, even threatening to torture the reluctant shepherd to make
him speak. And it is the shepherd’s words that irrefutably condemn Oedipus.
Even here, his will to act doesn't end. Discovering Jocasta, his wife and
mother, dead, Oedipus quickly takes his punishment into his own hands and
gauges out his eyes.
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