Monday, September 21, 2015
Ew
So here I am being a good little student reading my 500 lines in Oedipus and I literally only got through 15 lines before I had to stop and blog. Tiresias is trying to tell Oedipus that he's the murderer but of course Oedipus won't listen, so the blind prophet is just like okay I'm going to riddle some bit more. Tiresias says "Revealed at last, brother and father both to the children he embraces"(520). Let's just stop there; if you really think about it, Oedipus is half-brothers with all of his own children. How gross is that? What I cant believe is that Jocasta doesn't realize he is her son! I get that she left him to die in the mountains and everything but there should be some maternal sense that kicks in, shouldn't there be? Anyway, Tiresias continues, "To his mother son and husband both -- he sowed the loins his father sowed" (521). That is just repulsive to me. Can you imagine not just marrying your dad's ex-wife, but it be your mom too? What was Sophocles thinking????? I think I'm so weirded out by all of this because I'm putting all of this in modern times. The reason is because my mom told me a story not so long ago about how her friend knows of this woman. So this woman's husband got with the son's girl friend (sorry if this is hard to follow)! So then, the girl friend left the son and the husband left the wife, now they're married!!!! So I guess Sophocles wasn't really sick, maybe the myth of Oedipus wasn't really a myth at all just a really messed up twist on a already weird situation.
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6 comments:
This is so weird to even consider....can you think about having a boyfriend and them leaving you for your widowed mother and then having to call your ex boyfriend "daddy?" It is comical to us to consider this, but to the Greeks this was a serious dilemma that one may face. It is nerve wracking to think about Jocasta not even recognizing her own child. I understand what Ashley is bringing up- shouldn't a mother recognize her own offspring? I am seriously excited to see what else goes down in Oedipus. This stuff is super interesting and I love the connection to incest.
It's disgusting! The wording only gets worse, as seen on lines 1494 - 1497: "Now, loathed by the gods, son of the mother I defiled, coupling in my father's bed, spawning lives in the loins that spawned my own wretched life." In a few concise words, Sophocles (and the translator) makes the image so lurid and awful.
But Jaclyn, I am pretty sure that the Greeks were disgusted by this as well, and definitely didn't have to face this on a regular basis or consider it anywhere near normal, since a major element of the play (and the original story) is that it deals with one of the most basic taboos of humanity.
@jac The scenario of "calling your ex-boyfriend 'daddy'" is horrible though.
I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across an ad. The title read "Woman Discovers Her Father Is Also Her Mother's Father, Becomes Anorexic." Of course I thought about Oedipus and especially this post. If anyone is interested in reading the article, here is the link: http://metro.co.uk/2015/09/21/we-share-the-same-father-moment-woman-finds-out-her-grandfather-is-her-dad-and-he-raped-her-mother-at-gunpoint-5400937/
I know there is no rape in Oedipus^^^ I was leaning more on the fact that the daughter did not know her father was also her grandfather and how the incest that circulates in the family leads to a very dramatic and negative outcome.
@Jackzheng you're right, I realize now that it definitely was still taboo for the Greeks, and haha I knew everyone would chuckle at the "daddy" reference.
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