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Examples Of Blindness In Oedipus The King

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“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn 't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Søren Kierkegaard. This is the takeaway of the play King Oedipus by the Greek philosopher Sophocles written around 440 BC. The characters in the play are struggling to find the truth, yet blindness is a result of not the truth. Most of the characters are blinded by the facade of happiness surrounding them that until the King, Oedipus, searches for the truth about what actually happened to King Laius, that is when they uncover the real hardship underneath. The meaning of blindness in the play King Oedipus is the result of truth and knowledge. Teiresias, the prophet, is blind because he knows the whole truth. In this play, most of the characters are …show more content…

In this play, most of the characters are physically not blind beside the prophet Teiresias, which begs to differ what blindness actually means in this play. Teiresias being a prophet has provisions of knowledge and inevitably knows all of the truth about the people coming straight down from the Gods. It is very ironic how he is the only blind character in the play as he is not blinded by the truth. When Oedipus was searching for the killer of Laius, he summoned Teiresias and asked him to tell him the truth of what happened to the late king. When Teiresias claims that it was Oedipus’s hand that killed Laius, he did not believe him and called him out on that. Then Teiresias said “‘Have your eyes, and do not see your own damnation?’” (Sophocles, 37). Teiresias being the only one blinded at this moment of the play was using a play on words here. He is saying that you are the one with eyes, yet you cannot see the actual truth. By the end of the play when Oedipus finds out the whole truth about his lineage, he ends up blinding himself. In this play, the physical meaning of being blind is knowing the whole dark

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