Blog 4

Sophocles uses feet to limit Oedipus as a king.  The reading that we’ve done recently—revolving around ancient Greece and its cultures—represents the feet as both the implements through which challenges are overcome and the conduits through which grace is given.  Odysseus travels the length of the known world on his two feet and grants mercy to those who fall to them.  Oedipus, though, experiences severe limitations in both of these aspects because of his foot condition.  His childhood torment has quite literally handicapped him, preventing him from rising to the heights of an Odysseus.  However, the first reference of feet in the play comes when the Priest falls to Oedipus’ feet and begs him to solve the problems that have beset his subjects.  Oedipus’ solution is just as misguided as his feet are disfigured.  The gods’ displeasure with him sends him Tiresias, who tells Oedipus a number of things that he doesn’t want to hear.  Furthermore, Oedipus—whose name literally means “swollen feet”—find himself condemned by his own past, in the same way that the injury of his past literally handicaps him.  He also lacks the free will—much as he lacks ambulatory powers—to change his fate, as his past has already caught up with him.  He can’t run away from this (both literally and figuratively).