Summary
The Chorus enters and cries that even Oedipus, greatest
of men, was brought low by destiny, for he unknowingly murdered
his father and married his mother. The messenger enters again to
tell the Chorus what has happened in the palace. Jocasta is dead,
by suicide. She locked herself in her bedroom, crying for Laius
and weeping for her monstrous fate. Oedipus came to the door in
a fury, asking for a sword and cursing Jocasta. He finally hurled
himself at the bedroom door and burst through it, where he saw Jocasta
hanging from a noose. Seeing this, Oedipus sobbed and embraced Jocasta.
He then took the gold pins that held her robes and, with them, stabbed
out his eyes. He kept raking the pins down his eyes, crying that
he could not bear to see the world now that he had learned the truth.
Just as the messenger finishes the story, Oedipus emerges
from the palace. With blood streaming from his blind eyes, he fumes
and rants at his fate, and at the infinite darkness that embraces
him. He claims that though Apollo ordained his destiny, it was he
alone who pierced his own eyes. He asks that he be banished from
Thebes. The Chorus shrinks away from Oedipus as he curses his birth,
his marriage, his life, and in turn all births, marriages, and lives.
Creon enters, and the Chorus expresses hope that he can
restore order. Creon forgives Oedipus for his past accusations of
treason and asks that Oedipus be sent inside so that the public
display of shame might stop. Creon agrees to exile Oedipus from
the city, but tells him that he will only do so if every detail
is approved by the gods. Oedipus embraces the hope of exile, since
he believes that, for some reason, the gods want to keep him alive.
He says that his two sons are men and can take care of themselves,
but asks that Creon take care of his girls, whom he would like to
see one final time.
The girls, Antigone and Ismene, come forth, crying. Oedipus embraces
them and says he weeps for them, since they will be excluded from
society, and no man will want to marry the offspring of an incestuous
marriage. He turns to Creon and asks him to promise that he will
take care of them. He reaches out to Creon, but Creon will not touch
his hand. Oedipus asks his daughters to pray that they may have
a better life than his. Creon then puts an end to the farewell,
saying that Oedipus has wept shamefully long enough. Creon orders
the guards to take Antigone and Ismene away from Oedipus, and tells
Oedipus that his power has ended. Everyone exits, and the Chorus
comes onstage once more. Oedipus, greatest of men, has fallen, they
say, and so all life is miserable, and only death can bring peace.
Analysis
The speech of the Chorus, with which this section begins
(1311–1350),
turns the images of the plowman and ship’s captain, which formerly
stood for Oedipus’s success and ability to manage the state, into
images of his failure. And the way in which it does so is quite
extreme, focusing particularly on the sexual aspect of Oedipus’s
actions. Oedipus and his father have, like two ships in one port,
shared the same “wide harbor,” and Oedipus has plowed the same “furrows”
his father plowed (1334–1339).
The harbor image ostensibly refers to Jocasta’s bedchamber, but
both images also quite obviously refer to the other space Oedipus
and his father have shared: Jocasta’s vagina.
Images of earth and soil continue throughout the scene,
most noticeably in one of Oedipus’s final speeches, in which he
talks to his children about what he has done (see 1621–1661).
These images of earth, soil, and plowing are used to suggest the
metaphor of the sturdy plowman tilling the soil of the state, but
they also suggest the image of the soil drinking the blood of the
family members Oedipus has killed (see in particular 1531–1537).
Oedipus’s crimes are presented as a kind of blight on the land,
a plague—symbolized by the plague with which the play begins—that
infects the earth on which Oedipus, his family, and his citizens
stand, and in which all are buried as a result of Oedipus’s violence.
