Oedipus, the fool

Final Copy

Period 1

Ms. Maropakis

27/10/2015

ENG4U1

Basil Mahmood
 “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool” – (As You

Like It, V.I.30-31). Shakespeare was known across the world as one of the most brilliant writers

to ever live. When a man with such gravity stresses the importance of the concept of wisdom, it

is sure to be a topic worth emphasising. However Shakespeare was not the first writer to do it, as

almost 2000 years ago another writer with the name of Sophocles also discovered the value of

wisdom. One of his most famous plays, Oedipus Rex, revolves around this central concept of

wisdom. It goes even deeper by letting the reader know that the only way to find truth about the

future, the past and a person’s character is through wisdom. In the play Oedipus Rex, knowledge

and wisdom are fundamentally different from one another as wisdom leads to truth while

knowledge does not, resulting in the notion that without wisdom, knowledge is worthless.

Wisdom helps in revealing the truth about the past while knowledge is misguiding.

Jocasta made many foolish assumptions about what happened in the past throughout the play. An

example would be when she thought herself to have avoided the oracle’s prophecy as she

remarks to Oedipus:

Then absolve yourself at once. For I can tell you

No man possess the secret of divination

And I have proof. An oracle was given to Laius

From phoebes no; but from his ministers -

That [Lauis] should die by the hands of his own child

What came of it? Laius,

It is common knowledge, was killed by the outland robbers -- (Sophocles 45)

Due to the fact that Jocasta desperately wants the prophecy to be false, she becomes blind to all

the crucial facts presented by the oracle beforehand. If she was wise, then she would have looked
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into how Laius was killed more critically instead of reaching a conclusion that supports her own

illusion. The knowledge Jocasta gained in the end just misguided her into proving her own

fantasy which ended up being false. This is evident of the fact that knowledge, if not deciphered

properly, has absolutely no value. Likewise, the willingness to ignore truth is seen in the

protagonist of this play, Oedipus, during his argument with Teiresias. After being pressured into

revealing what he knows suggests that “[Oedipus is] the cursed polluter of this land.” Distraught,

Oedipus refutes “[y]ou dare to say it! Have you no shame at all? And do you expect to escape the

consequence” (35). Similarly to Jocasta, Oedipus’ biases which in this case is excessive pride in

thinking of himself as a noble and faithful man prevents him being open to criticism which is

potentially useful. The knowledge Oedipus receives from Teiresias about his sins in the past is

accurate, however Oedipus’ refusal to interpret it as such caused one of the most unnecessary

conflicts in the play. If Oedipus chose to be wise like Teiresias, he could have seen what his sins

did to Thebes. However he made a decision not to and this knowledge ended up misguiding

Oedipus and his family into chaos. This once again proves that the knowledge may be perfect but

without the tools to unlock it, it once again has no value. Moreover, the benefits of wisdom are

not just confined to the past, it can similarly be applied to seeing ahead.

Wisdom will always allow an individual to have the clearest vision of the future while

knowledge will just make that vision blurry. This is especially true with Jocasta wilful blindness,

which occurs throughout the play. An example of this would be when Jocasta narrated, “[a]s for

the child, [i]t was not three days old, when [Laius] cast it out with riveted ankles” (45). After

hearing the prophecy that his child was going to kill him, Lauis decides, he should give it to a

random servant and trust the servant to kill the child, instead of killing it himself due to his faint-

heartdeness. This was a very foolish move he did not stop to think that he could not trust himself
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so how could he trust someone else. If he was wise he would have killed the child immediately

as the end result was the same either way but the one process ensured the result. This

demonstrates that knowledge can be a powerful weapon as it can reveal events years ahead but

an individual with no wisdom may just end up killing himself with that same weapon. On the

other hand, Oedipus makes mistakes very similar to his father’s. An instance of this would be

when Oedipus recalls that:

[Without his] parents’ knowledge, [he] went to Pytho;

But came back disappointed of any answer

To the question [he] asked [the oracle], having heard instead a tale

Of horror and misery: how [he] must marry [his] mother,

And become the parent of a misbegotten brood,

An offence to all manking – and kill [his] father.

At this [he] fled away -- (47)

Only using what he heard from the oracle, not any of his own critical thinking, Oedipus makes

an extremely rash decision and leaves Corinth. Without realising any of the consequences such

as leaving his entire life behind, Oedipus makes a very foolish move. This in the end leads to his

demise and him fulfilling the prophecy. If Oedipus had just stopped for a moment and thought

before he acted, he could have seen the truth in the future. Once again this is proving that

prophecies can be very powerful as they can reveal events no other man can see but without the

most basic critical thinking, the knowledge of the future can end up being detrimental. The past

and the future, however important they may be, there is still another aspect in the present which

wisdom helps a person see the truth in.

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Wisdom allows an individual to see truth in his own character, knowledge will just

disillusion that individual. This is very accurate when it comes to the personality traits of the

main protagonist, Oedipus. During a conversation with Jocasta, Oedipus reveals that “[t]he

leader roughly ordered [him] out of the way…[a]nd every man their [he] killed” (48). This

reveals that with Oedipus’ short-temper, even the smallest act like requesting him to move aside

will drive him to kill that person. After this event Oedipus should have realized that he has an

anger problem and work towards resolving it but alas he was not wise. This eventually was one

of the factors that leads to his downfall as killing his father was part of the prophecy. This attests

to the fact that Oedipus received many hints, pieces of knowledge that correlate to the prophecy

but his reluctance in putting the pieces together using wisdom made those pieces useless. Further

analysis shows that Oedipus has yet another fatal flaw in his character that he could not detect,

which is his hubris. This was shown when Oedipus points out that “[he is] here to learn for

[himself] – [he], [w]hose name is known afar” (25). Through analysis of this quote, it is quite

evident that Oedipus’ excessive pride is being revealed subtly through his dialogue. This is a

major flaw in his character which he was not wise enough to see. His excessive pride in himself

and failure to take other’s opinions resulted in him eventually losing everything. He was

disillusioned that everything he did was right and couldn’t figure out that it was actually the

complete opposite. This once again justifies that he had many opportunities like to realize that he

had a flaw that needed to be fixed but he did not have the wisdom to do it, so all those

opportunities had no positive outcome.

Wisdom and knowledge are polar opposites, one leads to the truth while the other does

not, thus leading to the only conclusion that knowledge is dependent upon wisdom in order to

have any significant value. This comes into play when finding the truth about the past, the future
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and an individual’s character. Sophocles did a fantastic job in delivering this message in his

masterpiece of a play, Oedipus Rex. Although the play was written over 2000 years ago, the fact

that we are reading it now proves that some life lessons are timeless.
 References

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It;[Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 1954. Print.

Sophocles. The Theban Plays. Trans. E.F. Walting. London: Clays Ltd, 1947. Print