Oedipus The King, 4

The shepherd arrives.  Oedipus struts a bit as he interrogates him, but the shepherd is reticent to speak.  Oedipus switches to threats.  Finally, the shepherd admits to freeing the young baby... who he had been instructed to kill... by the baby's parents... in the house of Laius... intending to avoid a prophecy that he would one day kill his father.  And swears he did it out of pity, though he clearly regrets his actions now.  Oedipus finally gets it:

Lost! Ah lost! At last it's blazing clear.
Light of my days, go dark. I want to gaze no more.
My birth all sprung revealed from those it never should,
Myself entwined with those I never could.
And I the killer of those I never would.

[Nice work, Mr. Roche.] He flees into the palace.

The Chorus is also aghast. At first, they lament the downfall of so great a man as Oedipus. Their disgust grows, though.

Palace workers emerge with even more disturbing news. The queen Jocasta killed herself by hanging in her bedroom chamber, cursing the bed which she shared with Laius and Oedipus. Upon finding her body, Oedipus seized her broaches and gouged his eyes out with the pins-- repeatedly. He seeks only now to be banished from Thebes. He-- and the Chorus-- wish he had died that day on the mountainside.

Creon enters, now the acknowledged new king of Thebes.  Oedipus begs to be banished, but Creon insists on seeking the gods' advice before proceeding further.  After all, it is not more clear than ever that they are truly in charge.  In the meantime, Oedipus tries to settle some parts of his estate.  His sons, he thinks, will be fine.  His daughters, though-- Antigone and Ismene-- will be done for.  Who will ever marry them knowing thaeir infamous pedigree?  Creon brings the girls before Oedipus, and he imparts final advice:

 My darling little ones, if you could only understand,
I'd tell you, oh, so many things!
Let this suffice, a simple prayer:
Abide in modesty so may you live
the happy life your father did not have.

Oedipus is ready to exit to his doom, but tries to cling to his daughters one last time.  Creon rebukes him:

Stop this striving to be master of all.
The mastery you had in life has been your fall.

----------------------------

Remember when I said this was a comedy?  Not anymore.  Multiple puncture wounds to the eyes keep it firmly in the tragedy camp.

I remember reading this in high school and mentally playing around with the paradoxes of fate.  What is fated is fated, and all actions-- even those attempting to avoid the outcome-- lead to that inevitable result.  Cool idea, and fun to puzzle out, and see it applied in time-travel movies and soforth.

There's a slightly deeper aspect to this, though.  Once we've conceded that fate is real and unavoidable, the important question is our attitude towards it.  The true disasters took place because the characters wouldn't merely submit to their fates.  Jocasta was far too meddlesome, trying to place herself above the power of the gods in charting her own life.  Her attempts were doomed from the start.  Oedipus, on the other hand, seems to have the opposite problem.  In some ways, he was too ready to take advantage of the fates he could see laid out before him.  He happily commandeered the leadership of Thebes, and aggrandized himself in the process, never acknowledging that his successes were no more due to his merit than any other person's failures were due to their faults.  He too put himself above the gods, not in his attempts to outwit them, but in his delusional self-regard and belief in his own prowess.  Creon, in the end, displays the proper outlook, and gives us the true moral of the play.