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'Sight And Blindness In Oedipus The King'

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'Sight And Blindness In Oedipus The King'
Vincent Mendez
Arden Thomas
Humanities 1
23 December 2016

Blindness is the Unknown

In this play, sight and blindness are a motif because some people in the play are blind and a lot of people are able to see. Eyes are everywhere in this play. For example, Teiresias is blind but he can still see the clearest of everyone. Tiresias is also able to predict the future. Some of the things he predicted were that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. He also predicted that Oedipus would grow up and not die when his parents tried to kill him.
Both sets of parents are also blind in this story to many facts. At the beginning of the story, the parents that adopted him are blind to the fact that he has a curse of him killing his father
…show more content…
Oedipus realized that he killed his father on a road and that his wife was actually his mom. This is a good example of why he is able to see more after he has gone blind. I think that Oedipus can see better in some ways but not in ways that you use every day. He can see better in some ways because he has learned more and acknowledged that bad things have happened to him. This is good for him because it helps him think more in depth. Technically when you go blind the part of the brain you used for seeing changes to be able to be used for other things. For Oedipus this means he will be able to be more creative and be able to read between the lines more. Later in this play, his father is blind to the fact that when he was fighting, he was not actually fighting a random stranger but he was actually fighting his son. If he wasn’t blind he would be able to see that his son was the stranger was actually his son. In the story, if it wasn’t for blindness the curse wouldn’t have happened because they would have been friends and talked to each other instead of killing each other. Other people that are blind in this story are Oedipus’ kids, because they do not know that their father is also their brother. Jocasta is blind because she doesn’t realize that she is having babies with her son. When she is able to see again metaphorically when Oedipus is revealed, she kills herself by hanging

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