Oedipus The King Pages 176-181 [10/06/2011]

Today I read pages 176-181 of Oedipus The Kind. Oedipus's wife was actually his birth mom, and when he was a baby she gave him to the shepherd with orders to kill the baby. Jocasta was terrified over the horrible prophecies. But he didn't kill the baby, instead he gave the baby to Laius's father, Polybus. The shepherd pitied the baby, he also told Oedipus that King Laius,

"hoped he'd take him off to his own country,

far away, but he saved him for this, this fate.

If you are the man he says you are, believe me,

you were born for pain."

His wife Jocasta killed herself after storming out of the room earlier. She was ripping her out as she rushed up to her room, slamming doors, flinging herself across the bridal-bed. Oedipus found Jocasta hanging by her neck. He cried as he slipped the halter from her throat, and laid her down in a slow embrace. Then he took the long gold pins that held her robe and dug them into his eye sockets as he said,

"You, you'll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused

Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen,

blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind

from this hour on! Blind in the darkness-blind!"

[No participation grade this is a make up blog]