Sophocles: The Oedipus Cycle

December 2006-January 2007

CAMI

I was really looking forward to reading the Oedipus cycle, since it is still so widely cited today. If you don’t know who Oedipus was and what his problems were, then you are behind the times.

What I thought was interesting about Oedipus Rex was the responsibility taken for something which was not really his fault—or at least intended. In our own lives, we might have learned things from our parents or society that make us behave a certain way without knowing it to be wrong, and yet it destroys and inhibits us nonetheless. Good is good, and bad is bad, no matter the intention. With Oedipus at Colonus, I was much more interested than I expected to be. It was interesting to see Oedipus years later when he’s had time to think of his situation. He felt innocent and yet unworthy at the same time. It seems he has not been able to forgive himself, or it at least shows the damage that some things can do to us, without redemption. Antigone, as a loving daughter, sister, and strong woman, was the easiest character for me to identify with. Antigone is willing to die for what she believes in. Here is a great line: “You will remember what things I suffer, and at what men’s hands, because I would not transgress the laws of heaven.”

Fadiman wrote that Aristotle told that Sophocles said he tried to portray people as they ought to be. (How’s that for removed?) I certainly see that in what we read. A great read, an inspiring story, and an important accomplishment!

JANICE

My favorite of the Oedypus cycle was Antigone, the Joan of Arc of ancient Greece. She never wavered in her religious principles even under intense pressure, even death. Of course this theme has been repeated throughout history, and continues today with Christians being challenged and vilified. The play asks, What if your country (or any other institution you rely on) goes bad? What does the individiual do? Antigone chose to die rather than give up her freedom to do what was right. In Oedipus Rex I liked how he was not afraid to seek the truth at all costs, even when it threatened his own happiness and peace. He found that "he [was] not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting." Our society today often reflects the false idea that humans have no free will -- a devil-made-me-do-it attitude. Then we have Oedipus who was dealt such terrible cards and yet knew he was not a puppet in the end. To me these plays are about free will, saying that man (unless under constraint) is responsible for everything he thinks and does.


JULIA

"Poised on the razor edge of fate" pretty much sums up these plays. Oedipus thought he was circumnavigating the prophecy but instead played directly into it. His heart was in the right place. In the introduction, this passage helped me to understnad our reasons for reading Sophocles and what we can take from it, "Oedipus did have one freedom. He was free to find out or not find out the truth. One freedom was delivered to him: the freedom to search for truth about the prophecies, about the gods, about himself. And of all this freedom he makes full use. . . ." . . . .There are a few things we have absolute control over in spite of the wiles of the gods and life's fateful dealings and that is the things we choose to think--0ur attitude . . . We are seeking the truth about ourselves when we write journals.

The Only Human Freedom

I wonder at all the workings
of fate, predestination, plan,
randomness. Do the gods pull
our earthly puppet strings,
do we move when manipulated?

Or do we resist, pull loose,
exercise what we think is choice
only to find this is also design?
I imagine my father as a boy,
the influences that spawned me.

Who would I be if mother married
another? My head hurts of thinking,
mysteries of DNA, chance, deestiny.
I go to the kitchen, brew tea, sip
warmth in winter, read Sophocles,

pit Oedipus, see life as full
of good fortune and bad, realize
acceptance is the great lesson suffering teaches us and the one
great freedom we all have

is to search
and to find
the heroic and noble
truth
about ourselves.

1/4/07