Monday, September 5, 2016

Speak the truth!

One thing that stuck out to me was this: when Oedipus and Jocasta begin to get close to the truth about Laius's murder, Oedipus holds onto a detail in saving himself. Jocasta says that she was told how Laius was killed by "strangers", whereas Oedipus knows that he was alone when he killed a man in similar circumstances; it calls into question the whole truth-seeking process that Oedipus had undertaken. The dialogue emphasizes just how desperately Oedipus and Jocasta really just don't want to speak the obvious truth. How many times do we try and make excuses for we ourselves to be (falsely) proven as innocent for something that we know we've done wrong? We'll try to find something to justify our wrong doing, similarly, how Oedipus was trying to hold onto the fact that Jocasta was told that Laius's death was done by strangers. I also feel as if this story ties in with the idea of predestination: If something was going to happen, it happened and there's nothing that you can do about it. While as Christians, we believe in the idea of free will and making our own decisions that affect our outcome, it seems that the society in the time of ancient Greece had other ideas, hence the prophecy of Oedipus.

P.s. I commented on Alesha's and Brax's posts.

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