Today I read pages 166-170 of Oedipus The King. Oedipus believes that he indeed killed the previous King Laius, but he also has a witness that he didn't question yet and he sees this witness as his last hope. If the witness's story matched Jocasta's, he can't be the killer, because she said 'thieves'. However, if the witness only mentions one killer, Oedipus is clearly guilty. Jocasta, Oedipus's wife, went to the temples of the gods with her branch and incense in hand. She starts to beg Apollo to cleanse her and Oedipus and to set them free of defilement. Jocasta's life changed in the blink of an eye. She even compared it to a plane crashing.
"Look at us, passengers in the grip of fear,
watching the pilot of the vessel go to pieces."
A messenger from Corinth comes to King Oedipus's palace and tells Jocasta that Polybus is dead and Corinth now wants Oedipus to be their king. Jocasta remembered that this is the same man Oedipus fled not to kill and thought to herself,
"-and now he's dead,
quite by chance, a normal, natural death,
not murdered by his son."
She finds out soon after though that Polybus died of sickness and old age. The death of his father seemed to lift a huge weight off of Oedipus's shoulders.
"But now, all those prophecies I feared-Polybus
packs them off to sleep with him in hell!
They're nothing, worthless."
[No participation grade this is a make up blog]
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