ENL:220 Tragedy to Mystery

Ryan Coats

Critical Analysis of Oedipus the King extract: Teiresias speech and Oedipus
response: You my be king home again. Lines: 490-521

The relationship between the characters Tiresias and Oedipus is long and
complicated, for there is the blind soothsayer of Thebes (and the worker of Apollo)
and the King, whose metaphorical blindness leads to him down the path to his own
destruction. Historically, Tiresias never figured in the original myth of Oedipus,
however his character plot in Sophocles Oedipus the King and Antigone creates
dramatic conflict within the play, thus creating dramatic tension between characters.
In the specified extract, there appears to be a struggle for dominance and
power within Oedipus as his future, and past, seem to be unravelling before him
despite not being knowledgeable about the matter. Teiresias explains that he is a
servant of Apollo, and thus has the power to reply to Oedipus insult about his lack of
sight. In Greek Mythology, from the time of Homer, Apollo was the son of Zeus and
Leto; the Greek God who made men aware of their own guilt and purified them of it;
he also solely communicates the will of Zeus through oracles and soothsayers such as
Teiresias. Thematically, Teiresias function within the story is to highlight the
limitations of human knowledge, which cannot alleviate suffering in a world in which
destiny is in the hands of the gods 1 . Sophocles therefore included Teiresias as a
character in his version of Oedipus, so that through the will of Apollo, the soothsayer
could enlighten the incestuous king of Thebes to his own malignant history. In the
lines 495-499, Teiresias retorts by explaining that Oedipus is blind to his own family
lineage, and thus hinting to the situation that he is presently in at that moment in time,
specifically suggesting towards his wife, and mother, Jocasta and the death of his
father.
The main theme within the play would be the on-going battle between man
versus fate, whether human beings have free will or only follow a pathway built by
the gods. There are a multitude of scenes that reveal this theme, however one of the
subtlest relations is Oedipus Rex, meaning swollen foot. Oedipus name is a direct
reference to the fact that he was left on the side of a mountainside with his ankles
pinned together; that injury symbolizes how his movements (within destiny) have
been restricted since his birth.

Hanna Roisman: http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2003/200305.pdf > 22nd October 2014