Examples Of Blindness In Oedipus Rex

Blindness: Tragedy That Allows You To See Reality Picture this, you wake up one day to go to school and start to get ready. As you walk to the bathroom, you stub your toe against the door because you physically weren’t able to see that it was closed. Not only are you in immense pain, but your mood is now also ruined. What an absolute disaster this is! For those living with blindness, this is just one scenario they have to worry about every day. However, even without one of the five main human senses, there are still many visually impaired people that grow up to become very successful. Stevie Wonder, for example, an American singer and a musical genius, lost his sight shortly after he was born. Despite this and the challenges he faced, he

With a net worth of over 110 million dollars, it causes many to beg the question, how did someone who physically couldn’t read music, become a professional musician? This is explained by a quote from Helen Keller, who once said “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” This couldn’t be more true in Sophocles’ famous tragic play, Oedipus Rex. In his prominent piece of literature, the protagonist Oedipus is completely unsuspecting and “blind” to the fact that he kills his father and is the reason a disastrous plague struck the city of Thebes. Because he was utterly unaware of this, he commits many actions throughout his life that ultimately lead to his demise. Throughout his universally known tragedy in literature, Sophocles uses dramatic irony in his

At the beginning of his conversation with Tiresias, dramatic irony is displayed in Oedipus’ opening statement. He states “Relief from the plague can only come one way. Uncover the murderers of Laius, put them to death or drive them into exile. So I beg you, grudge us nothing now, no voice, no message plucked from the birds, the embers or the other mantic ways within your grasp” (Sophocles, lines 352-354). In this quote, he begs Tiresias to uncover the murder mystery and murder or drive the person that killed Laius into exile in order to save the people from the plague. However, he doesn’t understand the fact that he is the true murderer of Laius, therefore he is basically asking for the blind prophet to murder him or drive him into exile. Later in the conversation, Oedipus expresses more dramatic irony when he grows increasingly irritated with the fact that Tiresias refuses to reveal the truth to him. “Nothing! You, you scum of the earth, you’d enrage a heart of stone! You won’t talk? Nothing moves you? Out with it, once and for all!”. Tiresias then says “You criticize my temper . . . unaware of the one you live with, you revile me” (Sophocles, lines 381-385). Oedipus releases his anger in a furious statement about Tiresias after he refuses to tell him the murderer of Laius and ultimately save Thebes from the plague. Oedipus