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Stuck in the Present A theme that appears often is that there is one and only one timeline. Ancients explored this idea through prophecy. In the Bible, when something is prophesied it occurs, no matter how much those it affects try to alter their predicted futures. In Greek literature, as shown in Oedipus, the King, one cannot circumvent the future presented by prophecy.
Modern scientists and theorists have also concluded that trying to change the course of history by altering the timeline is impossible. There is one and only one future, and knowing what it is does not give one the ability to change it. Now a person claiming to be able to change the future with some supernatural knowledge of it would be considered irreverent in that he would be attempting to do the implausible, but in the days of the ancient Greeks, it is considered blasphemous to think that one s power exceeds the gods and that he can rebel against prophecy by controlling his own future. With Jocasta, in Oedipus, the King by Sophocles, the writer explores the woman s role of wife and mother and shows the vanity in trying to supersede prophecy. The role of a mother is to take care of and nurture her children. Jocasta s entrance into the play is her reprimanding of Oedipus and a hint of mothering comes through as she settles a dispute between Creon and her son.
Letting her baby be murdered is her one true crime. To complete such a task Jocasta has to do two things. First she has to see her baby as the man in the prophecy, a shameful man that kills his father and then has sex with her. Second she distances herself by acting as if she has no part in the deed of killing the baby. Jocasta carries a willful ignorance like this throughout the play; later she begs Oedipus to call off the search for the truth of his parents when she realizes that she is his mother. Jocasta deals with the fact that she tried to kill her son and later married him by ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.
One of the most interesting aspects of the play is that Jocasta is both the wife and mother of Oedipus. Despite this being a peculiarity, there is evidence in the play itself that it should not be shocking. Jocasta explains to Oedipus that many a man before you, in his dreams, has shared his mother s bed. Although she adds take such things for shadows, nothing at all, the idea is shown to be common. I know that I look very much like my father and at times I remind my mother of him; would it be so unheard of that I would remind her of a time when she was attracted to him? It s not at all uncommon for women to marry men younger than they; it can make them feel youthful.
I know for a fact that my mother has been attracted to my friends and that she feels younger around them; it would not be that hard to conceive of a mother grasping to her youth by marrying her own child. As a wife Jocasta is always supportive of and submissive to her husband. We learn that Jocasta is a better wife than mother. When faced with either the death of her son or her husband she sides with her husband. Jocasta concedes to the crime of killing her only son, a monstrous idea, so that the son will not kill her husband. She concedes to the killing of her only son and conceals the emotional pain it must cause her.
Jocasta is constantly consoling Oedipus, trying to make him feel better no matter how bad things look until finally the news is made public that he is her son and she can bear her pain no longer Jocasta s problems start when she attempts to know the future. In retrospect, she would have never committed the sin of trying to kill her baby if she had not tried to know what the gods know. She blasphemously tries to change what the gods have foretold. Jocasta prays to and serves the gods but ignorantly dismisses their prophecies.
Jocasta shows that she knows its best not to try to know the future when she says that it is better to live at random, best we can, but she does not follow her own advice. In her final act of suicide Jocasta shows herself to be both irrational and noble. She is irrational in that she loses her self-control before she kills herself. She is noble in that by giving her own life Jocasta saves the life of Oedipus. In ancient Greece the role of mother is set when a woman gives birth to a child. The role of wife is formed by the public act of marriage, the private act of sex, and the later result of children.
The idea of a woman marrying her son is immoral. The psychological demands of feeling wifely way about a son or a motherly way about a husband is supposed to be inhumanely possible. Jocasta s life has become a paradox; and she cannot live while she is her son s wife. Life is impossible for Jocasta while Oedipus is still alive. If she does not kill herself he surely will kill himself because his life is as much of a paradox as hers. By killing herself first Jocasta allows Oedipus to be the one that continues living and is therefore able to repent.
Repentance is important because humans pay for their crimes after death in Hades. Of the three, Laius, Oedipus, and Jocasta, Jocasta suffers the worst punishment after death because she is punished the least during her life; Laius was killed by his own son and Oedipus has the rest of his life to beg the gods for forgiveness, but Jocasta s suicide just makes her appear wretched even though there is really no way it can be avoided. Jocasta should not try to foresee her future, but should be trying to live a moral life. Sophocles knows that we should live in the present because not a man on earth can see a day ahead. It is better to just do the best we can because nothing human can penetrate the future; we are stuck in the present. Sophocles. 1998.
IH 51: Oedipus the King. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/ Hunt Publishing Company.
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