Oedipus The King Blindness

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“An ignorant person is the blind instrument of their own destruction” (Simón Bolívar, 1), this quotation said by a South American revolutionary leader, Simón Bolívar, is a very accurate representation of Oedipus’ journey in the Greek play Oedipus the King. According to Bolívar, the characteristic that makes an individual unaware and uniformed is the distinctive feature that causes their own devastation in their life. An ignorance of the truth is one of the main themes of Oedipus the King and this is represented through the motif of blindness, due to the fact that key characters are described as figuratively blind thus blindness drives the story to its climax and leads to the tragic end of the main characters.

The character of Oedipus is metaphorically blind, because although he is described as a noble and heroic King, in reality he is completely ignorant of his own role in destroying the city. At the beginning of the play, Oedipus is characterized as an …show more content…
This is particularly evident when comparing Oedipus and Jocasta’s lives and how they ended to Teiresias’ life. A person who is literally blind is very aware of it and knows that they have to deal with it for the rest of their life. While at first it may be hard to accept, as time goes on adjustments are made and life gets easier for that person. Whereas a person who is physically able to see however figuratively blind, there is nothing that person can do until they learn the truth of the situation and often the person will live for a very long time without knowing that they are wrong. In this play, when Oedipus learned the truth, his way of dealing with his metaphorical blindness was to blind himself. When Jocasta found out the truth, her way of dealing with it was to kill herself. Ultimately, it is evident that in this play blindness led to truth and the truth led to

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