32 pages • 1 hour read
SenecaOedipus
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 60A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Inevitability of Fate
The dominant theme in Oedipus is the inevitability of fate, with each character ultimately succumbing to his or her destiny. Throughout the play, the main characters attempt to avoid fate. Oedipus, Jocasta, and Laius try to avoid fulfilling the prophecy both before and during the main action. Jocasta and Laius abandon baby Oedipus to prevent their son from fulfilling the prophecy; Oedipus flees the city of his presumed parents in an attempt to also avoid it. However, it is through these very actions that the three characters end up fulfilling their fates. Despite their efforts, their fate is unavoidable as humans are powerless before fate and the gods.
The Oracle at Delphi and the blind prophet Tiresias embody fate within the play. Both accurately, but ambiguously, describe what will happen throughout the play. As a result, the characters only have the free will to affect the details of the plot, but cannot control the major events.
Oedipus expresses a heightened awareness of fate from the beginning of the play. As he is reflecting on the suffering of Thebes, he notes how he was “right to flee” his fate (I.12). This statement illustrates his tragic flaw, as he mistakenly believes he can avoid his destiny through exercising his own agency. Later in the play, when Oedipus “grasp[s] his predicted fate” (V.915), he no longer tries to avoid confronting his tragedy—he instead accepts his fault and punishment. The chorus emphasizes this lesson at the end of Act V. After Oedipus’s moment of recognition, the fixed nature of fate is confirmed. The chorus describes how “[a]ll progress on paths preset” means that the “first day has fixed the last” (V.987-988). While it seems that humanity lacks free will as they are predestined to follow a certain path, each individual has the free will to either accept or rebel against this fate.
As representatives of the ordinary people of Thebes, the chorus stresses how fate affects all men equally, whether royalty or low-born. They describe how “[w]hat we mortals suffer / What we effect, comes from above” (V.981-982). By claiming that all destiny “comes from above,” the chorus emphasizes the inevitability of fate by attributing its source to divine powers. As a result, they state that fate “is our master” and all must “yield to fate” (V.980). Since “[a]nxiety cannot alter / The destined spindle’s threads” (981-982), it is wiser for humans to resign themselves to destiny than to attempt to fight against it.
The Tensions Between Ignorance, Knowledge, and Guilt
In terms of the plot, the central question that the characters seek to answer is the identity of King Laius’s killer, a crime that occurred long before the events of the play. King Laius was murdered “ten harvests ago” (V.783). The characters’ lack of knowledge prevents the killer from being brought to justice. Thematically, this search is for a deeper truth about Oedipus’s past and his moral character.
Knowledge and truth are often associated with imagery of light and the sun throughout the play. The Delphi Oracle is associated with Apollo, the god of the sun. The sacrifice made to Apollo while consulting the Oracle includes the appearance of a small flame. The play often puns on sun and son to show the connection between light and truth: If Oedipus could see his situation and identity clearly, he would recognize that he is the son of the man he murdered. By contrast, ignorance and guilt are associated with darkness. Oedipus’s blinding ironically subverts this association: As Oedipus gains knowledge and true sight, he loses his physical sight, leaving him in darkness.
Even when ignorant of his specific crime, Oedipus can sense his guilt. From the beginning of the play, Oedipus connects the state of Thebes to his ignorance. When Oedipus “grasped his predicted fate” (VI.915), he “damned himself / With the crime’s guilt” (VI.916-917). Guilt is separate from knowledge: Despite their intention to avoid the prophecy, Oedipus and Jocasta violate two fundamental taboos against incest and the murder of one’s parents. It does not matter whether or not they commit these crimes knowingly, because they are guilty regardless.
As Oedipus works to identify Laius’s murderer, he encounters great reluctance from others to share their information. According to Creon, Oedipus will soon “long for lack of the knowledge [he] crave[s]” (III.514) if he discovers the truth. Creon’s line expresses a fundamental paradox: Oedipus needs to know something that he does not want to know. Oedipus himself explains why this idea is true when he states that “Ignorance is a weak remedy for evil” (III.515)—a lack of knowledge does not absolve Oedipus of his sin. Gaining definitive knowledge of his own guilt does have a negative effect, as “Truth often harms the man who digs it out” (IV.827), but Oedipus realizes that truth is a necessity in order to end the crisis in Thebes. While this truth presumably saves Thebes, it results in Jocasta’s death and Oedipus’s blinding and exile.
The Isolation of Power
The isolation of power informs many aspects of Oedipus’s struggle. He enters the stage alone at the beginning of the play and “stand[s] untouched” by the plague (I.34). Oedipus recognizes his solitude and is troubled by it, stating, “What else can I think when this plague [...] / Spares me alone?” (I.29-31). Oedipus senses that he must be guilty and that he “has made the air guilty” (I.36), leading to the infection of his subjects. He believes that, as the king, he alone must be responsible for his city and that holding the guilty accountable is a part of his “pious duty” (II.245). Unlike in Sophocles’s telling of the myth, Seneca avoids involving Oedipus’s children in the play, with only a passing reference made to their incestuous biology. For Oedipus, his personal connections are subordinated to his kingly duties.
Oedipus’s power as king also isolates him from truth and knowledge. Creon hesitates to tell him what the Oracle said, as “[k]ings loathe the words they order spoken” (III, 520). Creon’s fear is justified, as Oedipus threatens him, saying “the painful rack / Will teach you the power of an angry king” (III, 518-519). The power he has as king has put him in a higher status position, separate from those lower than him. Wielding his power further separates him from those around him even if they are his supportive advisors. Oedipus’s power also results in self-alienation, as having fled his home country and assumed the throne of Thebes, he does not know his true identity or personal history.
The play also ends with Oedipus alone, with Jocasta’s body at his feet. The metaphorical isolation of power has left him physically isolated. He can no longer see, his marital companion is no longer with him, and he must leave his kingdom, reduced to being “the king / Of the blind” (V, 1048-1049). His isolation at the play’s end functions as his punishment from the “Brutal Fates” (VI.1059) for trying to change his fate, while also serving as retribution for the suffering of the common people of Thebes, who watch on silently as the chorus. In his final lines, Oedipus describes his new companions, “Brutal Fates and blasting tremors of Disease / And Wasting and black Plague and rabid Pain” (VI.1059-1061). Oedipus links the higher power of the “Fates” and his own emotional “Pain” to physical ailments such as “Wasting” and “Plague,” suggesting that the results of his actions now have physical as well as mental forms that are destined to accompany him for the rest of his life.
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