Blindness and Vision as Entangled Themes in Oedipus Rex

Introduction: The Paradox of Sight and Blindness

Poor, wretched, twice-blind Oedipus: first blinded to inevitable fate, then blinded by fate's inevitability. Sophocles invites us to ponder the nature of destiny, and how, wise as we think ourselves, the very acts by which we work to change our fate only bring it rushing to meet us.

Blindness and vision — there is hardly anything mysterious there. Most of us have a pretty good idea of what each is and how it differs from the other. Yet Sophocles thinks otherwise, and gives us good reason to wonder just how different they really are from each other. In fact, by the time Oedipus stumbles beyond the gates of Thebes, we begin to realize just how entangled vision is with blindness, for nothing blinded Oedipus to the inevitability of his fate so effectively as having had it shown to him. Seeing his fate did not enlighten him — it put him in greater darkness.

Consider Sophocles's use of Creon to introduce us to this theme of entangled vision and blindness:

Creon's Prophecy and the Nature of Ignorance

CREON:
In this land, said the god; "who seeks shall find;
Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind."

In a strange way, Creon's comment is a kind of prophecy in itself regarding the rest of the play.

Exactly who is it who has been sitting with folded hands? Oedipus. Ignorance is one kind of blindness, and Oedipus at the opening of the story is blessed with precisely this kind: ignorance that what he had done up to that point had already fulfilled the oracle's prophecy concerning him. Having done nothing — having sat with folded hands — to pursue the murderer of Laius (remember, he does not know he is the dead king's son at this point), Oedipus is blind, that is, in the dark. In seeking the truth, he finds it, is enlightened, and yet ends up quite literally blind, exchanging one kind of blindness (ignorance) for another (physical).

But there is more to it than this. Oedipus is also the blind man in Creon's remark — the one who "sits with folded hands or sleeps." What better way to describe Oedipus before the reveler's comment at his foster-father's party, the comment that sent him off to consult an oracle concerning his parentage? Before hearing a party-goer doubt his patronage, Oedipus was content, and because he was content, he was also blind to the facts concerning his birth and destiny.

While Creon's remark is a subtle prod in the direction of understanding blindness and vision as inextricably intertwined, Sophocles practically telegraphs this concept to us by making the prophet Teiresias blind — a blind seer. It is not merely a rhetorical device, nor an attempt at irony, that the one person in the whole play who sees clearly is the blind seer.

Teiresias: The Blind Seer as Archetype

Vexed at being unable to discover the killer of Laius, Oedipus turns to the Chorus, which suggests an alternative route to enlightenment through Teiresias:

CHORUS:
My liege, if any man sees eye to eye
With our lord Phoebus, 'tis our prophet, lord
Teiresias; he of all men best might guide
A searcher of this matter to the light.

An argument could perhaps be made that since blind people in the ancient world were not fit for any kind of work requiring the use of eyes, it follows that they either subsisted as beggars, found some other work they could do, or starved. The Egyptian Pharaoh Meketre employed a blind harpist. Consider Homer — if indeed a real person — the blind poet, who himself employed a fictional blind oracle in The Odyssey.

So perhaps blind oracles were common in the ancient world. But having the Chorus say that the man best able to guide Oedipus to the light is the blind man who "sees eye to eye" with the sun god (Phoebus is another name for Apollo) is too strong a statement to be a simple statement of fact. It is worded too emphatically just to relay something familiar, and if blind oracles were indeed commonplace, an ancient audience would hardly need such strong wording to accept the claim.

Rather, even were blind oracles commonplace in the ancient world, this one is special because he is not merely a conveyor of bad news to Oedipus. He is a kind of archetype, symbol, or personification of Sophocles's message: that vision and blindness are not actually dichotomous, but intrinsically entangled. Oedipus himself is another archetype of the same idea — sight and blindness coexisting not sequentially, but simultaneously.

Conclusion: Enlightened into Darkness

In a sense both figurative and real, Oedipus was blind before his enlightenment, and blinded later by enlightenment itself.