Sabrina Zhou 11/27/19 Period 2 - Blog #1

I’ve never blogged before in my life, so this is an experience. 

November 27, 2019. I ask you, reader, do you have a brother? No? Well, imagine you do have one, if you don’t. Now, imagine you had a husband too. Say you love this hubby very much. Well, your darling hubby is trying to kill your dear brother for “disloyalty”. Such was the case for Jocasta, Oedipus’s wife, who was a witness to Oedipus attempting to banish her brother, Creon.

What would you do?

• A classmate kicked off the discussion with a Yo Mama joke (“So, Jo—” to which someone else cries “Jo Mama!” and the comment “Oedipus’s Mama!” is fired right back at him. Everyone clapped). There followed up a comment about the power of persuasion. Jocasta could persuade her husband for mercy for her brother. Indeed, that is what she exercises in the play to save her brother: Calm, “prophecy-defying” persuasion. 

• One discussion later I was staring at a huge chunk of text on the board: Stichomythia. It is a technique in verse originating from Ancient Greece, where dialogue between two characters is in small, alternating half-lines. It is representative of two characters fighting: fast-paced, and altogether contentious. Think of two children fighting over a toy. “I want it!” “No, I want it!” “NO, I want it!” “NO, I WANT IT” “WANT IT.” “WANNNNNT ITTTT.” Well, the back and forth dialogue, and the quick snappy lines, are like that of a stichomythia, although my example is considerably more crude. The stichomythia we analyze is the dialogue between Creon and Oedipus, on pages 133-135. Oedipus assumes Creon is plotting against him, and Creon fires back against his comments, and the result is a quick argument. They have lines in about equal proportion, which adds to the stylized pacing of the two.

• Now enter Jocasta again. She is all about persuasion, as aforementioned. She tries proving to Oedipus that the prophecy he heard is a lie, and that humans have no place in dabbling with the divine. But to us, this dialogue is just a hotbed of irony. She’s referencing a prophecy to state that humans have no right to prophecy! And she exclaims that Laius was killed by some robbers “at a place where three roads meet”. Therefore, Laius was never killed by his son, so the prophecy never came true, right? WRONG. Oedipus realizes he was this “robber”, but he still doesn’t realize that he is Laius’s son, so he simply grasps that he murdered the king, and all that “tough guy talk” he made before about “driving the killer of Laius from our homes, since he is our pollution…” well, it’s him! He better drive himself away! Finally, Jocasta mentions how Laius stabbed their son’s feet and cast him far away, stating that the son was dead, so how could the prophecy ever play out? To which, somehow, Oedipus doesn't make the connection that his scarred feet instantly proved him to be the son of Laius. Man, if only I had a nickel for every time there was an instance of dramatic irony...  

• It leads us to an interesting question though: What about Jocasta? She is Oedipus’s husband, after all. The clues are all laid in front of her. Wouldn’t she realize that her husband is the son she birthed many years before?

• That takes us to a discussion about truth and denial of the truth. To reference yesterday’s discussion about truth: the general class consensus was to tell the truth, no matter what, despite the hurt it may cause. Jocasta probably knows the truth, but doesn’t speak up. Why? Is she trying to be merciful to her beloved husband/son? Is this concealment to keep him safe and worry-free? Is she trying to deny and absolve it from herself?

• In Greek Mythology, Laius, before kinghood, was the kidnapper and rapist of the divine hero  Chrysippus. Chrysippus might’ve been a 12 year old boy at the time, and the Gods vowed to punish Laius for such a crime. And he was: his son was fated to kill him. But Oedipus is facing the consequences of Laius’s actions too. It goes back to an old Greek Mythology motif: children must always face the consequences of what their parents did. The statement is like a deterrent to the parents: be good, and your children will also live a good life, but if you ruin it, your children are hurt by your actions too. 

• A small comment on the “Oedipus Complex”: a concept where one has a sexual attraction to his/her parent of the opposite gender. Well, Oedipus exercises precisely this. But I must add: is it really his fault he lies in bed with his mother? He doesn’t know, after all. He “was fated to do so”. The Oedipus Complex is built on the foundation of freely knowing that one is lying with their parent. But where is freewill in Oedipus’s case? Maybe the “Oedipus Complex” is an unfair label to him. 

• So our class went in three directions today. One: Stichomythia, and how it tells of Creon & Oedipus’s dramatic argument, and Creon’s self-establishment of his innocence, despite Oedipus’s assumptions. Two: Dramatic Irony (heaps of it!) and how Oedipus is making many personal connections to the prophecy, but somehow still can’t grasp the big, giant, humongous picture. Three: Jocasta and the possibility that she is in denial of the truth. Maybe she conceals the truth to hide herself and Oedipus from the pain and guilt of acknowledging it. It all leads back to Truth itself. If we were in Jocasta’s shoes, would we still tell the truth? If we were Oedipus, how would we take it when we do realize the truth? Is Creon’s truth enough to overcome a hot temper like that of Oedipus’s? Stay tuned, and we’ll know in the next episode of “Oedipus and his Hot Mess of a Life”.

(Student Reflection: The prevalence of truth to all the characters in Oedipus is just as prevalent to us. We established that yesterday, but today’s class brought it even more towards Jocasta. We’re never going to be in a situation where our husband is our son, but what of a situation where we know a huge truth, and we don’t know how/ if to share it? What would we have done if we were Jocasta ourselves? We explored her motives and denial to see if she was making the ideal choice. It is similar with Oedipus’s situation: to us, we laugh at the irony of it all, but Oedipus fails to grasp the truth right in front of him. Utter failure to see a truth can happen to us too. What do we do then? Do we rely on others to see it for us? What if they themselves shrink from the truth? Basically, when we face a truth, how are we going to use it?)