"Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eye are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as the bodily eye..."
- (Plato, the Republic)
Too true are the words of the Greek philosopher, and too deadly are they for one who's pride blocks the “common sense” that enables him to accept this truth. No other example illustrates this paradoxical notion of blindness in sight and sight in blindness better that the Sophoclean play of “Oedipus the King”. The tragic story of the Theban king, who is unable to escape the curse of the Gods, reveals a blind man can possibly see more clearly than the man with the presumed vision of the eye. Although Oedipus was visually healthy, his blatant disregard for the will of the Gods and his inability to see what was around him proved him blind, and it was only when he lost his physical vision that he gained sight of his fate, and the masked world around him.
The fate assigned to Oedipus from his birth was arguably an inevitable one, and could've only been made reality if some tragic flaw in Oedipus was to cancel his vision, setting the stage to the bloody finale. Hubris was this flaw in Oedipus that lead him to believe that he could outsmart the Gods, and escape killing his father and marrying his mother. In the unwritten prologue to the play, Oedipus runs away from where he thought he was born, and he confesses this to Jocasta later on: “I was running to a place where I would never see that shameful prophecy come true.” (Sophocles, 56). He was unable to see that if the Gods he believed in really existed, then he was nothing more that a pawn in their game of chess. It was his pride that had led him to believe that he was great enough to escape the prophecy. This is a huge part in his blindness in sight, because he still had his eyes when he was plotting to overcome his fate, and he was blind to the fact that he was a mere man.
The second part of Oedipus' blindness in sight had overcome him when he was on the throne and when the investigation of king Laius' murder had began. Himself being the killer, Oedipus never once thought to himself that it could be him until all the truth was revealed. Only a blind fool could not make the connection between the events that led him to the throne of Thebes, and the murder of Laius. And a blind fool he was, as he cursed the murderer of Laius; “... I call down a curse on him, whether that unknown figure be one man or one among many. May he drag out an evil death-in-life misery...” (Sophocles, 15), placing curses upon himself that were the worst a man could utter. This manner of thinking, including his quick, un-thought-out decision making, and his unending confidence in himself are all aspects of his blindness that is so overwhelming, that stabbing his eyes into darkness was most probably the only way he could begin to see what was really around him.
And after engulfing himself into the darkness that accompanies blindness, he began to see the world he lived in. Of course, he had began to understand what had happened before he blinded himself, and some might argue that he could've kept his vision and lost his hubris and mental blindness, but that is not the case. There was no way that the already emotional Oedipus could keep the sense that had tricked him the most; the vision that had caused him so much pain. When one or more of a man's senses are dulled, the others are driven to extremes. The case of Oedipus was no different, because after losing vision, his mental understanding of things changed, and the hubris that was always tying the hands of his mind was driven out. When Oedipus said “It was Apollo friends, Apollo who brought to fulfillment all my sufferings.” (Sophocles, 96), he had just come out of the palace and was experiencing physical blindness for the first time. At first, he describes blindness as “...dark cloud all around me, enclosing me in unspeakable darkness...” (Sophocles, 95), but his new-found understanding of the will and greatness of the Gods proved he had gained the vision that the lack of destroyed him in the first place. He was also able to relate what had happened in his life to the prophecy, and saw his wife Jocasta as his mother, and the man that he killed so many years ago as his father. This brought him clear mindedness, and it was his sight in blindness.
The short-lived life of Oedipus the King (short-lived because the life he lives after blinding himself is not really life) can be paired with the phrase “blindness in sight, and sight in blindness”. The meaning of this term is that even though a man is visually healthy, he may be mentally blind, and even though another or that same man is blind, he may have more vision than the rest. Tiresias, the blind prophet, was a fine example of living life in clarity, a clarity that came to Oedipus too late to save his life. Vision was always his problem, from his birth, to his destruction, and it was hubris that impaired it.
