Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Suicide
Almost every character who dies in the three Theban plays
does so at his or her own hand (or own will, as is the case in Oedipus
at Colonus). Jocasta hangs herself in Oedipus the
King and Antigone hangs herself in Antigone. Eurydice
and Haemon stab themselves at the end of Antigone. Oedipus
inflicts horrible violence on himself at the end of his first play,
and willingly goes to his own mysterious death at the end of his
second. Polynices and Eteocles die in battle with one another, and
it could be argued that Polynices’ death at least is self-inflicted
in that he has heard his father’s curse and knows that his cause
is doomed. Incest motivates or indirectly brings about all of the
deaths in these plays.
Sight and Blindness
References to eyesight and vision, both literal and metaphorical,
are very frequent in all three of the Theban plays. Quite often,
the image of clear vision is used as a metaphor for knowledge and
insight. In fact, this metaphor is so much a part of the Greek way
of thinking that it is almost not a metaphor at all, just as in
modern English: to say “I see the truth” or “I see the way things
are” is a perfectly ordinary use of language. However, the references
to eyesight and insight in these plays form a meaningful pattern
in combination with the references to literal and metaphorical blindness.
Oedipus is famed for his clear-sightedness and quick comprehension,
but he discovers that he has been blind to the truth for many years,
and then he blinds himself so as not to have to look on his own
children/siblings. Creon is prone to a similar blindness to the
truth in Antigone. Though blind, the aging Oedipus
finally acquires a limited prophetic vision. Tiresias is blind,
yet he sees farther than others. Overall, the plays seem to say
that human beings can demonstrate remarkable powers of intellectual
penetration and insight, and that they have a great capacity for
knowledge, but that even the smartest human being is liable to error,
that the human capability for knowledge is ultimately quite limited
and unreliable.
Graves and Tombs
The plots of Antigone and Oedipus
at Colonus both revolve around burials, and beliefs about
burial are important in Oedipus the King as well.
Polynices is kept above ground after his death, denied a grave,
and his rotting body offends the gods, his relatives, and ancient
traditions. Antigone is entombed alive, to the horror of everyone
who watches. At the end of Oedipus the King, Oedipus cannot
remain in Thebes or be buried within its territory, because his
very person is polluted and offensive to the sight of gods and men.
Nevertheless, his choice, in Oedipus at Colonus, to
be buried at Colonus confers a great and mystical gift on all of
Athens, promising that nation victory over future attackers. In
Ancient Greece, traitors and people who murder their own relatives
could not be buried within their city’s territory, but their relatives
still had an obligation to bury them. As one of the basic, inescapable
duties that people owe their relatives, burials represent the obligations
that come from kinship, as well as the conflicts that can arise
between one’s duty to family and to the city-state.
