How Is Oedipus Selfish

Oedipus the King Imagine living a joyful life of comorbidities with your beautiful wife and children, only to realize one day that everything you knew was a lie. Examining a work of literature such as Oedipus the King, by Sophocles (406B.C) is an extremely difficult to understand, without using resources such as the schools of criticism it would be even harder. Sophocles (406 B.C) writes a play that although at first sigh seems like the unwanted and unavoidable fate of a character. After taking a closer look, it is not fate but instead it is a subconscious desire that ends up fulfilling the prophecy. Using two schools of criticism, physiological and social-historical we will examine a child’s subconscious love for his mother and Oedipus and Jocasta’s subconscious knowledge of the the prophecy. These are the reasons that

In Oedipus the King (406B.B) Jocasta states, “why ask? Old shepherd, talk, empty nonsense, don’t give it another thought, don’t even think” (p.1091). Jocasta seems to subconsciously know the truth and does not want Oedipus to find out. Even though she has not yet found out for sure, one could assume that by this point of the story she has a very clear idea of the truth. This is without even mentioning that Jocasta slept with Oedipus various times and did not notice his ankles which would have been marked. Going back to Freud (1900) he mentioned that, “he too questioned the oracle and was warned to avoid his home since he was destined to murder his father and take his mother in marriage” (p.1115) By now we cold assume that both Oedipus and Jocasta both were aware that they could end up together, but they did it anyways. This reinforces the point that Freud (1900) made, arguing that every child will fall in love with their parent subconsciously but only some of them, such as Oedipus will become a “psychoneurotic” when they grow up