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If all the fate and prophecy stuff in Sophocles’ Oedipus is making this play feel pretty antiquated, think of Oedipus as a play about truth—and the consequences of not accepting the truth. The 60second Recap can think of a few public figures who could take a lesson from Sophocles’ protagonist…

Video Transcription:

430 B.C. That’s when scholars think Oedipus was written. That’s a loooong time ago. But one of the reasons this play endures is because its message is as modern as our time.

For the most part, we’ve abandoned the idea of multiple gods and fate and the whole notion of prophecy. So those aspects of Oedipus probably don’t feel very relevant. But the idea of truth? It would be tough to find a more current topic.

Oedipus is all about truth. It’s what starts off the action of the play—the need to find the truth about the murder of King Laius. It’s what drives the action of the play: The deeper Oedipus digs into his history, and the history of the King, the more truth is revealed, and the more the play moves forward. And truth is what draws the play to its terrible conclusion: Confronted with the reality that he did kill his father and sleep with his mother, Oedipus gouges out his own eyes.

(That’s pretty disgusting.)

Finally, truth is at the heart of Oedipus’s emotional journey. He won’t accept the truth. He can’t accept the truth. Even as the facts pile up, Oedipus still can’t bring himself to face what’s irrefutably true. And in the end, even though Oedipus admits to what happened, there’s still an element of denial. By gouging out his eyes, Oedipus makes himself symbolically blind to the horrors of the truth.