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Truth In Oedipus The King

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Everyone is blind to something, whether it is intentional or not. Oedipus the King, written around 430 BC by playwright Sophocles, illustrates how everyone is blind to something; people who are physically blind can sometimes see the truth better than people who can see the physical world. Oedipus chooses to be blind to what he doesn't want to hear because his power makes him hubris and blind to the truth.
Tiresias tells Oedipus "that the murderer you seek is yourself" (episode 1) but Oedipus doesn't want to believe it. Oedipus heard a prophecy that he was going to kill his father and sleep with his mother, Oedipus doesn't believe Tiresias because he believes that his parents are in Corinth. When Oedipus demands that Tiresias tells the truth, Tiresias replies with saying that "I [Tiresias] …show more content…

When a messenger comes from Corinth to inform that the king of Corinth has died, he thought he was giving Oedipus good news because "Doubt all you will. Truth is truth… Because it was from my hands that King Polybus Recieved his son. You were given to him by me" (episode 3). Oedipus starts to question everything when he finds out that he was adopted because now he doesn't know if the phropecy he heard was fulfilled or not. When Oedipus was talking to Jocasta, Oedipus got told that Jocasta and King Lauis had a son that they "Gave orders to pierce the ankles of the child with an iron spike and cast him forth to die on a barren hillside" (episode 3). Oedipus finally overcomes his blindness when he hears this clue because his ankles had scars from where he was pierced as a child. Oedipus accepts that he is responsible for the disease on the city.
Everybody is blinded to something in their lives. Oedipus is blind to the truth because his power makes his hubris. Sophocles shows us this example through Oedipus and his blindness to the truth, making us think about what we are blinded to in our everyday

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