A major theme in this play seems to be that "ignorance is bliss". Oedipus was a lucky guy; he was abandoned by his real parents only to be adopted by a different king and queen and be raised a prince anyways. What are the chances of that! After he flees his home for fear of killing his adopted father, He murders his real father and marries his mother, with whom he has kids with. Way to fulfil the prophecy anyways, Oedipus.
My point is that he is completely happy until he becomes determined to discover where he actually came from. When he chose to uncover his past is when problems started to arise for him. Poor Oedipus finds out in that running away from his "parents" so that he wouldn't fulfill the prophecy, he actually ran into his real parents, thereby fulfilling the prophecy. First he finds out he killed his father. After that he realizes that he married his mother and had kids with her. And then he calls his kids a disgrace and says that nobody will ever want to marry them because he had them with his mother.
This is all very confusing, but my point is that, without knowing the truth, Oedipus would have gone on to live a happy life with his wife/mother and his incest kids.
I definitely agree that a major theme is the benefit of not knowing the entire truth. I also think that this theme may carry on through the other plays,or at least I see it in Wild Duck (Act 4). It would be really interesting to explore the different ways that the writers accomplish this theme, especially since the plots and styles are so different.
ReplyDelete