Oedipus's Coping Skills (Or Lack Thereof)

Oedipus, like all people, is subject to the human condition. I also believe that he likes to think that he is a person of superb character. For the audience, or reader, of the play that Oedipus is far from pristine.  The first hint at the Oedipus struggling with the more destructive side of his nature is his show of temper in front of the palace. He becomes so frustrated that he yells at Teiresias telling him that, “…twice you have spat out infamy. You’ll pay for it!!”(349-350). Throughout the play Oedipus continues this violent temper and a tendency towards hubris, both part of the darker side of humanity. He also demonstrates many redeeming qualities such as his love for his children when he fears for them as he leaves at the end of the play. As he speaks of his daughters he says, “But my poor daughters, who have shared my table, Who never before have been parted from their father- Take care of them, Kreon; do this for me.”(1409-1412).

So Oedipus, he could be good. he could be bad, so what? Right? He’s doing just fine. That is true, until he finds out that he has actually fulfilled the prophecy and killed his father and married his mother. The messenger recounts Oedipus’s actions after his discovery, “He stormed about the room… from one to another of us he went, begging a sword, Hunting the wife who was not his wife, whose womb had carried his own children and himself… He hurled his weight, as though wrenched out of himself,… He rushed in. And there saw her hanging, her body swaying From the cruel cord she had noosed about her neck… He loosed the rope and lowered her to the ground…The king ripped from her gown the golden brooches That were her ornament, and raised them and plunged them down Straight into his own eyeballs.”(1206-1223).

After doing so well Oedipus falls, as all tragic heroes must, allowing the sinister side of his nature to take over. Essentially, his coping skills are non-existent. He abandons all thoughts and gives in to deep depression. Oedipus is ashamed that he has accomplished the one thing that he set out to avoid.

Let's Start at the Beginning

The human condition, simple phrase for something that encompasses of all humanity. Each and every one of us is in some way a part of this condition. It is not something that you opt into. It is an essential part of being human. The condition itself is hard to define because it is something sensed within us, an internal that each person must come to terms with by themselves.

Briony, a main character in Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, is plagued by this issue. As a young girl she told a lie that would destroy the future of the man involved. This destruction also spread to the man’s lover, Briony’s sister, Cecelia.

 Many characters in literature struggle with the good and bad found within themselves. A notable example is from T.A Barron’s The Great Tree of Avalon trilogy in which the main character may fulfill either the dark or light side of a prophecy.

How can mankind be capable of such love and charity, while at the same time being capable of such brutality and destruction? How do different people confront this contradiction within themselves?