Theme Of Blindness In Oedipus The King

Oedipus The King by Sophocles
Theme of Blindness
Sophocles was a prolific writer and his long life enabled him to have a prodigious literary output. There is always a deep philosophic content at the back of Sophocles’ plays. Men suffer in the tragedies of Sophocles, characterisation always charged with emotion and poetry guesstimates the growth and development of his dramatic genius.
One of the main underlying themes in Oedipus Rex is blindness. Not just physical blindness, but intellectual blindness as well. The issue of blindness is utilized as an effective contrasting technique for Oedipus at different points in the play. Simply talking about blindness, however, is a little ambiguous. It can be broken down into two components: Oedipus 's ability to "see" (ignorance or lack thereof), and his willingness to "see". The word "see" can be used in both contexts here. Throughout the play, these two components are always at the center of the action.
Even people that have great vision and can have the physical capability to see, can still be blind to truth and complete understanding of it. Throughout the tragedy Oedipus the King, Sophocles ' repeatedly bring up the idea of sight and uses it as a metaphor for insight and knowledge. The protagonist of the play, Oedipus, is "blind" to the fact that the fate that he had tried so hard to avoid, had come true without him knowing of it, while the physically blind prophet Tiresias was the one who can actually "see" and understand the