"Time who sees all has found you out
against your will; judges your marriage accursed
begetter and begot at one in it."
Is ignorance bliss? Would it have been better if Oedipus never knew the identity of his parents? They abandoned him because of a prophecy that he would kill them... but if they had not abandoned him they would not have died the way they did. Oedipus fulfilled the destructive prophecy when his mother killed herself because she feared Oedipus discovering the truth of her duplicity and abandonment. She that he knew as his wife... was also his mother. How wrong is that?? Regardless, she did not know her own son when she met him and so she married him. However, if they had begun with truth, his father would still be alive as well. Because Oedipus did not know his father when he met him on the road, he killed him in hasty anger. Since he killed his father, that left his mother a widow whom he later took as his wife. So maybe ignorance isn't bliss, but there's a lesson in truth to be learned from this story. Truth brings life while falsehood harbors death.
"Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain."
Commented on Lauren's
This is such a tragic story. If Oedipus grew up with his parents and knew them, I don't think he would have killed them, at least not in this manner. And when his mother does figure out he is her son, why not just tell him? He may have still killed her, but it would have caused much less agony in the journey to find his mom. And just imagine if Oedipus founf out his mom knew who he was and did not ssay anything, that would have been far worse than just telling him when she found out.
ReplyDeleteI believe that had Oedipus known from the start about the prophecy, the choice to fulfill it would have been in his hands, not in fate's. But I also think this is how the tragedy had to unfold because if he had known, if he had not killed his father, he would not be the tragic hero we pity and admire. His entire life was based on a lie and the people closest him were part of that lie. I agree that there is truth to be learned.
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