It is clear that Oedipus is not a superhero. He is king of the Thebes and a victim of Greek fate. In the play, Oedipus kills his father and sleeps with his mother. There is so much dramatic irony in this play. When Oedipus sends Creon to Apollo to investigate the cause of his kingdom’s suffering he returns and tells Oedipus that everyone is suffering because someone murdered the previous king. Oedipus goes on to tell the people of his kingdom that anyone who aides the murderer will be punished. He curses the murderer not knowing until he talks to Teiresias that he is the murderer. Then he becomes more suspicious when Jocasta tells him of the prophecy Laius received. So this whole time he was cursing and speaking badly of himself.
This play deals a lot with Greek fate. To the Greeks fate is something you cannot escape and when you to try to fight this fate it happens no matter what. Oedipus’s fate was that he would kill his father and marry his mother. I’m sure if most of us heard this about ourselves we would do everything in our power to fight it also. But when Laius tries to fight his fate as well he ends up twisting things and making it so it does happen. When he pierces Oedipus’s ankles and leaves him on the hillside a man comes and saves Oedipus’s life and raises him as his own. Oedipus grows up to also heard the same prophecy as his parents and trying to fight this fate also he runs away from his adopted parents to run into his real father along the crossroads and kills him. He then goes on to marry his mother just like the prophecy foretold.
I looked more into the Oedipus Complex and I have to say it really is a disturbing way of thinking. Sigmund Freud came up with the idea that all men secretly want to kill their father and have sexual relations with their mother. Then on Wikipedia it said that even women fall into this way of thinking. I don’t know how true this is since Wikipedia isn’t a very reliable source but never the less he may have thought this. Freud supposedly said that even women have a homosexual crush on their mother. I’m sure most of us love our mother very much but I wouldn’t go as far to say that we would ever want to have sexual relations with our mom. That is obviously sick and wrong! I have no problem saying Freud is a crazy guy for thinking the way he did. Who would ever think this way without being crazy themselves?
Word Count: 449
The Electra Complex is the reverse of the Oedipus Complex, i.e. a woman wants to remove her mother to have her father. It's a little more subtle than what we discussed in class, but it's still pretty skeezy.
ReplyDeleteFreud is definitely a little strange. His whole thought on psychology was that everything was rooted in sex. As humans we go through phases and progress is getting over the sexual tendencies. From what I have gathered, a lot of people do not follow this state of thought anymore. However, Freud is important because of the impact he had, getting people to think about psychology in the first place.
ReplyDelete