Jocastas Role in Oedipus

While Jacosta’s speech point to her hypocrisy, it also points to a world without morals - a world where man should do whatever he wants and does not have to worry about his actions. If Oedipus had not killed Laius, then the oracle’s decree would never have come to pass. Jocasta infers in her speech that Oedipus, just like most other men, is blind when it comes to his future. In the end we see Oedipus as the blind man: in both aspects, that he can not see physically, and that he was unable to see his future [370-372]. The fate of a person still rests on the actions that he commits.

Jocasta’s speech is one of great importance it has several ideas that Sophocles is trying to stress throughout this play. One might say that Sophocles here argues that fate is responsible for everything and that man can do nothing to avoid it. She says that Oedipus should not fear sleeping with his own mother. Lined throughout the play are examples of people suffering for the actions that they committed that were immoral: the people of Thebes suffer from a plague because they have not avenged the murder of their Laius; Oedipus suffers for killing his father, and sleeping with his mother. He is subject to what fate determines for him. She also offers several pieces of advise to Oedipus which seem to go against what she feels or does. The people who he thought were his parents were not really his parents, and the man that he killed was really a king, and his father. In Oedipus’ case he punishes himself by blinding himself. Overall this passage is important for the reader to understand the themes, characters, and their positions within the play. If she really believed that a person should live life “unthinkingly," then she would have been able to continue on with her life, and not to have been so distraught by the news.