Blindness in Oedipus Rex -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 10:34:03 03/12/08 Wed
Author: Kiernan
Subject: Blindness in Oedipus Rex

In Ode I (pgs. 25-26), the Chorus speaks of the blinding of the victim:

Holy Parnassos' peak of snow
Flashes and blinds that secret man,
That all shall hunt him down:
Though he may roam in the forest shade
Like a bull gone wild from pasture
To rage through glooms of stone.

According to this description of a victim, the gods, or something else symbolizing the "holy," blind him to his fate such that he flees from it. When we discussed both "King Lear" and the Gospel texts, we talked about how any act of reciprocation, specifically a defense by the victim, actually perpetuates the mechanism which brings about his death. Christ's non-participation, his choice to imitate God's love, though it still brings about his death, reveals the mechanism which kills him.

We often point to the blindness of the crowd, their unconsciousness of the mechanism. Yet this passage, and others, point to a concurrent blindness in the victim. He participates in the conflictual mimesis which causes his own death. In this description, though the Chorus does not, perhaps, intend to draw this out, it becomes implicitly clear in their poetry surrounding the holy.

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