Jocastas Role in Oedipus
Jocasta is an integral part of the play, Oedipus The King, by Sophocles. Her actions and thoughts are important to the reader as well as the characters within the play. In this passage there are several themes and significant items that she is addressing. Jocasta is trying to help relieve Oedipus of his fears that come from the oracles. Jocasta states at the beginning of her speech to Oedipus (977-984), that since chance is against him there is no need to worry; he can not know what will occur in the future. Jocasta, on the other hand, does not follow her own advice, and decides to kill herself instead of living with the guilt of sleeping with Oedipus. She continues to say that because of fate man should live life without thinking of the consequences of his actions. It seems as though Jocasta advocates a world without morals. It is almost as though Jocasta does not see anything wrong with a man sleeping with his mother. Jocasta is being hypocritical when she says that person should not think about his actions because he can not avoid taking them [971]. According to this logic, her discussion to marry Oedipus, even after the oracle stated that she will marry her son who will kill her husband, was inevitable. When she fin
Oedipus might be physically blind only at the end of the play, but from the beginning of the play he is unable to see what his future holds for him. Jocasta infers in her speech that Oedipus, just like most other men, is blind when it comes to his future. Jocasta states that because man does not determine his own future; he can not control the events that will affect his future. He is subject to what fate determines for him. This is evident in the fact that even though Oedipus knew from the oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He was still unable to predict that Polybus was not his father, and that Laius was. Oedipus thought he knew exactly how to escape the oracle, but in the end he lost. The people who he thought were his parents were not really his parents, and the man that he killed was really a king, and his father. Nothing is clear for him at this moment. Towards the end of the play everything does become apparent to him, but he can only see what had occurred in the past, and not the future. It is ironic that the only person within the play that was able to see the future was a blind man. Oedipus even mocked Teiresias that he is blind. In the end we see Oedipus as the blind man: in both aspects, that he can not see physically, and that he was unable to see his future [370-372]. One of Oedipus' greatest mistakes were that he was unable to see that he is sleeping with his own mother. Jocasta, in this passage, is n
Some common words found in the essay are:
King Sophocles, Laius Oedipus, Antigone Oedipus, , mother jocasta, sleeping own mother, own mother, sleeping own, oedipus oracle, throughout play, future jocasta, oedipus blind, sleeping mother, unable future, speech oedipus,
Approximate Word count = 982
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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