Blindness In Oedipus The King

Theme of Blindness
Sophocles was a prolific writer and his long life enabled him to have a prodigious literary output. There is always a deep philosophic content at the back of Sophocles’ plays. Men suffer in the tragedies of Sophocles, characterisation always charged with emotion and poetry guesstimates the growth and development of his dramatic genius.
One of the main underlying themes in Oedipus Rex is blindness. Not just physical blindness, but intellectual blindness as well. The blindness issue is an effective contrasting method for Oedipus at different points in the play. Simply saying "blindness", however, is a little ambiguous. It can be broken down into two components: Oedipus's ability to "see" (ignorance or lack thereof), and his
The citizens had great respect and confidence in their current king Oedipus, and begged him for help so they would not die like so many others that already had from the plague. Oedipus sends for a physically blind prophet named Tiresias to disclose to him everything that he knows about the murder of Laius.
Tiresias immediately recognizes Oedipus when he arrives in Corinth and refuses to tell him what he knows. Oedipus gets upset with the blind prophet and mocks him by saying things such as, “Tiresias tells him,
"You are the curse, the corruption of the land!"

Oedipus is quick to call Tiresias a liar,

'Blind, lost in the night, endless night that nursed you! You can't hurt me or anyone else who sees the light - you can never touch me.

The irony is very obvious here since Oedipus is the one who is as blind as Tiresias in his own sense.
And the prophet is quick to counter by saying:
So,
you mock my blindness?
Let me tell you this.
You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption of your life, to the house you live in, those you live with- who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and
This darkness allows him to reflect on his mistakes and to absolve his sins. In addition to finding safety and calmness in blindness, Oedipus punishes himself, perhaps reducing his guilt. Now Oedipus has gone full circle: he can see all too clearly what the truth is, but he desperately does not want to accept his fate. So, in response, Oedipus commits an act of would-be escapism: he blinds himself so that he may not see. Unfortunately, this does not help his problem. This writer thinks it was an act of cowardice because he didn't want to accept the situation the way he "saw" it, and decided instead not to see it at