Here boy!

Sigmund Freud chose the term "Oedipus complex" to denote a condition in which a boy loves his mother and hates his father. This gives a lot of people the mistaken impression that the play Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King by the Greek playwright Sophocles is about a man who hated his father and loved his mother.

It was foretold that the son of King Laius would kill his father and marry his mother. So the young Oedipus was sent away by his mother Jocasta to be left for dead in the forest. Of course we learned from Snow White that unwanted children need to be dealt with directly, underlings cannot be trusted with such delicate tasks. Oedipus was handed off to King Polybus who with his wife Merope raised the boy as his own. When Oedipus became a man he to consulted an oracle. Bad move as they say. He was told that he would kill his father and defile his mothers bed. So he ran away from home. On the road one night he ran into a group of men, an argument ensued and one of them was killed. Arriving in Thebes soon afterward our hero marries the recently widowed queen Jocasta.

Twenty years later the truth comes out, the man he had killed beside the road was his real father. Jocasta hung herself and Oedipus poked his eyes out with the pin of her golden brooch.

Sophecles' play is about running away from fate. Or more importantly running away from yourself. The fruitless attempt to escape from who you are by changing the external world.

People often miss the point.

OWL

Oct. 4, 2007