In this tragic story there are two forms of blindness, ironically in the story, Oedipus will be both. The first form is figuratively blind, Oedipus spent his life trying not to fulfill this prophecy but as he tries to flee this he runs right into it. This shows how blind he is his whole life and how ignorance is bliss, but it isn’t necessarily right. His whole life he was living in ignorance and denying that he could be the one to fulfill the oracle. By doing this he led himself right into fulfilling the prophecy. Ignorance correlates to blindness in many ways. When we are living in ignorance, we are not knowing and this can be the same as being figuratively blind.
An example of being literally blind but having knowledge is Tiresias. He was a blind prophet and was also the one who knew the truth about Oedipus. Tiresias knew more as a blind man, than Oedipus did, with him being figuratively blind, but ignorant. Another symbol of ignorance was from Jocasta. Along with her husband, and now son, she wanted to find the murderer. Oedipus became
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It also represents how having knowledge is good, but it can also hurt. Once Oedipus saw his dead wife/mother he decided to gouge his eyes out. At this moment Oedipus was full of knowledge, but blind literally. As you can guess he was full of agony, not just from the physical pain, but knowing that the last sight he saw was his wife/mother dead, it can be a huge weight to carry.
The riddle shows how ignorant and also how knowledgeable Oedipus really was. Like mentioned earlier, Oedipus knew the riddle was about him, but he chose to deny it. He chose his ignorance over his knowledge. This shows that even though he chose ignorance then, when he confronted Tiresias he chose knowledge over ignorance. It is known that “ the truth shall set you free”,but i personally believe it did the opposite for him and his