At first glance, Oedipus seems  the victim of an unfortunate series of events. He was cursed and doomed without a chance. He flees his perceived homeland of Corinth, because it seems like the rational thing to do as he has just gotten word of the prophesy that he will murder his father and kill his mother. Furthermore, we don't see him trying to examine his inner experience as he journeys to find the root of evil in the land of Thebes. In his quest, he looks to hard facts for his answers, and gets lost in his pursuit of the truth. Rather than looking inward, he becomes preoccupied with suspicion and blame. As he looks to the blind Tiresius for answers, he does not heed his warning to halt in his questioning, and becomes rather defensive when he doesn't get what he wants: "You would not explain what you understand, but rather intend to betray us and destroy the city." (345)


For some reason blog is not allowing me to reply to you so my comment is here:  (Dr Van)



Andrew--it seems as though you want to focus on the way Oedipus looks at facts and gets lost in suspicion and blame instead of looking within.  You need to break down the play into specific examples of this (Tiresias, Creon, Jocasta, Messenger etc) and analyze his reasoning and failure in each instance--then you need to decide how you want to conclude--does he get better in the end at confronting truth?