Looking at Oedipus' strained relationship
with the Oracle of Delphi it's good for us to take a step back, and look at him as a
great solver of riddles. We know that he is.
He's good at this kind of thing. It's built into his background.
He solves that riddle of the Sphinx. What goes on four legs in the morning, two
legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening.
Turns out it's man. As an infant, a grown up, and then an old
man with a cane. That maps on to the stories that's told.
Oedipus configure this out, no one else can.
He's good at coming to these kind of riddles.
But in the play, we see him challenged over and over again by people who are
bringing messages back to him from the place behind us, of Delphi.
Hello, Delphi. We're trying to show you a respect in this
video, so we hope that you'll give us respect in ret, return.
The messengers come bringing messages from this place.
They're Creon, Teiresias, Jocasta. The Corinthian messenger who comes,
And finally, the herdsman from, Oedipus' own thieves.
These figures, are, are giving him things that are difficult to understand but
surely can't be much more difficult than the Sphinx,
But he's unable to see through them and he'll pay a terrible price for that
inability to understand. We'll take a look at a few of these,
serially, as they come up in the play. Creon first.
Is the first to come back from Delphi. He's been sent there by Oedipus to try to
find out what's happening. Why this plague on the City?
Creon comes with, with a face that's very clear.
He has a bright face. He's bringing good news.
And his message is that the God spoke in plain words.
King Phoebus in plain words commanded us to drive out a pollution from our land.
Pollution grown ingrained within a land. There's some problem here, and that needs
to be solved, and we to kick out, the murderer of Laius.
Teiresias then comes in next and try to fill in some of the gaps and say, you
know, what's this story really about. Teiresias is not as clear, and when he
brings the message from Delphi well Creon didn't quite understand all the ins and
outs of what it is he was saying. Teiresias does.
So the clarity that comes from the with a certain breezyness in Creon's first
message which gets really convoluted and ugly when it comes to Teiresias who knows
the full story. He's Apollo's priest and yes indeed we
should listen to him. That Oedipus doesn't is a problem.
When Teiresias walks in, 316, he tells us, oh how horrible is wisdom.
How terrible is wisdom. And then,
Soon enough, he, he does, he, he tries not to actually come out and tell Oedipus what
he knows. But soon enough, Oedipus boxes him in,
because he doesn't you know, this leader doesn't like someone caging around with
him as though there's some great secret that this other person knows, Teiresias,
and he's not gonna share it with Oedipus. He boxes him in.
Teiresias tries to squirrel out of it but eventually Teiresias has to come to tell
him, you are the land's pollution. This happened in line 353.
Now the play should be over. The, Apollo and Apollo's priests have just
told Teiresias that he's the one that killed Laius.
You're the land's pollution. Apollo has said we've got to get rid of
this murderer, the murderer is a pollution in the land.
Teiresias tells us you're the land's pollution so you've gotta go.
It should be over at this point. Oedipus though is not going to accept,
The message. So the riddle's been solved early in the
play but now watching Oedipus try to deal with the solution to the riddle is what
the rest of it's all about. He says instantly in his response, I
didn't grasp that, Oedipus says, 361, say it again, tell me one more time,
And Oedipus turns nasty and starts accusing Teiresias of all kinds of things.
Creon comes back and now Oedipus starts blaming Teiresias and Creon, at which
point Creon just turns round and says on line 602 and, to 605, you go ask the
Oracle, right. He, he's telling Oedipus to pay some
respect in amage to the Oracle. Line in 628, Creon, I think puts in a
really important message that Oedipus is not quite ready to hear.
Suppose you do not. Understand, Creon asks Oedipus, line 628.
Suppose you do not understand. Human beings have to be ready to reckon
with times when they're knowledge is incomplete.
When they can't solve the riddle. And Oedipus is unable to do that in the
play. He's consistently saying, well, we're
gonna prove that is oracle from Delphi is wrong.
Of course, I'm not gonna mother, marry my mother and murder my father.
We're have to prove that it's wrong. Oedipus, though, is not going to find a
solution, a solution down that path. Jocasta comes in and says yes of course
Oracles can make mistakes when she makes her appearance.
Laius my previous husband was told that he would be killed by his son.
But we exposed our child and left him out so there's no way Laius could have been
killed by his son by his own son. When he was killed at those crossroads.
The joining of three roads. At which point Oedipus says what?
He was killed where? The this king was killed at the
crossroads? At a Oedipus now thinks of back to the
point where he happened to run into the person that was in his way,
And in a frenzy of fury, went ahead and killed the king and his attendants.
Now he realizes that what's been said all along is that it's actually right.
He's the one who's the murderer of Laius. At his reaction at this point is line 727,
a wandering of the soul, I could run, Mad.
He realizes now to where about half way through the play.
And Oedipus realizes that indeed the truth that the oracle has been saying is indeed
going to be true, he is responsible for the king's death.
He doesn't have the whole picture quite yet.
That takes a couple of things to come together, a couple of pieces of the story.
He sends for this herdsman who happened to escape when Laius was killed, and he wants
that herdsman to try to exonerate him from the problem.
The thing Oedipus is hanging onto is the story that, that Laius was killed by
thieves, multiple people and Oedipus that can't have been thieves in the plural.
I'm, I, the person I killed all by my own hands so if Laius was killed by multiple
people it couldn't have been me that did it.
He wants to bring that herdsman in, in order to confirm that story of multiple
killers and so exonerate himself, of course its not going to quite work that
way. As he's waiting on the Thebes and
messenger to come this is a person it just turns out has a linkage with him in his
past, the Theban herdsman who survives Laius's, that murder scene of Laius is
also the one who Laius gave the infant Oedipus to, back, just as he was born.
So this person is already playing multiple important roles in Oedipus' past
unbeknownst to him, the fact that Oedipus is in the dark about this, I think is the
most important piece of the play. Then in the meantime though, a messenger
from Corinth has arrived. And the Corinthian messenger thinks that
he has wonderful news for Oedipus. The king there is dead.
The king your father, Polybus, the king of Corinth is dead.
Now that's of course sad, but we want you to come and be king of Corinth,
So that's gonna be good news, come and do that.
Oedipus and Jocasta at that point rejoice because the oracle that said Oedipus would
sleep with, or kill his own father can't be true.
If his father back in Corinth is now dead, But at that point the messenger from
Corinth has another message. It says, oh no don't worry about that.
There's no way you could have killed your own father, if you'd.
Even if you hadn't killed him, because he's not a father to you.
In fact I, It just so happens, and the Corithian,
herdsman who got you from a, some Theban herdsman, who handed you over to me,
saying that you were no longer wanted in your kingdom.
So that you were not actually blood relation with the king of Corinth, you
were only an adopted son, Oedipus of course thinks this is not good news at
all, and when the herdsman comes back in, the Theban herdsman now two pieces of
Oedipus past have come together, when he was a child and exposed on the hill this
herdsman, this Theban herdsman, was supposed to abandon him there and rather
do that he handed him off to a Corinthian, who just so happens to be the messenger
that's also on the stage at the same time. These two pieces of Oedipus's past come
back together. The herdsman's identity, the Theban one,
is confirmed three times. Oedipus, the chorus, and the Corinthian
messenger each recognize him as playing an important role in Oedipus's past.
And now the whole thing comes together. And Oedipus hears the tale of how he was,
indeed, exposed on this wilderness, this barren wilderness, with his ankles
pinioned together, and left to die by the Laius had hoped left to die and never to
be a part of his life anymore. An awful, awful thing for Oedipus to
contemplate. Let alone all the other things that he
realizes has happened. Which is that now he understands himself
to have been indeed the murderer of his own father Laius.
Soon enough it dawned on him that not only is that true but if he has been the
murderer of his own father he's also now currently sleeping with his mother.
Awful, awful things for him to come to turn with.
At which point, we hear the screams. Jocasta is now dead.
She's hanged herself. Oedipus goes back and rips out his eyes.
He's traded this wonderful insight that he has now for blindness.
And in a certain sense, Oedipus's coming to a point of blindness physically is an
enactment of a inability to see the depth of things around him.
That even though he's the smartest, cleverest man around, all of us, as
humans, are left with limits in our own knowledge.
Now, Oedipus has to deal with his even though he had refused to do it in the
past.