Lisa Durante Discussion 7

In “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles, I noticed the timeless human experience of shame and self-punishment. When Jocasta realizes that she has had children with her own child, the shame of what she has done, albeit unknowingly, is too much to bear and she commits suicide. When Oedipus realizes that he has had children with his own mother, he blinds himself because he cannot bear to look at those children. Shame is a universal feeling and this story, being a tragedy, is an extreme situation of the terrible extent of the shameful deed coupled with the public setting of Oedipus and Jocasta being King and Queen. Everyone can relate to feeling regret over a past act or event and subsequently the need to try to right the wrong somehow in order to cope with the inner turmoil. Sophocles creates a scenario where these feelings are so overwhelming that the audience not only sympathizes with the characters, but pities them.