The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [379]
Firstly, regardless for the moment of the specific nature of what Oedipus has learned about himself, what in general gives the play its unique power is simply that we have seen a man, confronted with a shocking crime, having to go through the acutely painful process of realising that he himself had been responsible. It is the supreme story in the world of a man having to face up to his own guilt, on a cosmic scale. It is no good saying that it was not his fault because he did not know what he was doing, or that he was just the unwitting victim of a malevolent fate. He has offended against one of the most fundamental laws of nature. Indeed, the more he learns about his guilt, the more he discovers that he has been responsible for even worse crimes. It was bad enough that he had killed his father, although there had been mitigating circumstances. Even if he over-reacted, he had only been acting in self-defence, and of course he had not known that Laius was his father. What makes it far worse for Oedipus, as the penny finally drops, is the realisation that he has also then married his own mother and had four children by her, who are not only his sons and daughters but also his brothers and sisters, and on whom he he has thus brought a lifelong curse. Finally, to seal the Tragedy, he has caused the death of his beloved wife and mother. His offence against the laws of nature and of heaven could not be more complete.2
When we do then focus on the specific nature of Oedipus's crime, however, what may strike us is how strangely it echoes that basic psychological pattern we analysed in Chapter Twenty which characterises almost every hero of Tragedy. In story after story we saw how the fundamental problem of the tragic hero is that he is frozen into too close a tie with `Mother' and is therefore locked in opposition to the values of 'Father'.3 He cannot become fully a man because he cannot `see whole'. As we saw in Chapter Sixteen, on the `unrealised value', the hero's opposition to the `Dark Father-figure' in stories always reflects his own need to develop into the light version of the father: in other words, to become a fully conscious, whole man. And often he achieves this precisely in the act of slaying the Dark Father-figure, symbolising the final elimination of the `dark masculine' in himself, to replace it with the balanced figure, outwardly strong, inwardly feminine, which he himself has now become.
Certainly King Laius has been a `dark father-figure' to Oedipus at their only meeting: an arrogant tyrant, behaving in a one-sidedly masculine way as he sweeps the lowly traveller off the road and beats him over the head. But Oedipus has also remained locked into his own incomplete state. He does not know he has killed his father, anymore than he is aware that he has married his mother. Precisely because there is so much he does not know, he cannot yet begin to `see whole'. And this is why we see him so often acting impulsively, disproportionately and in a way which shows him helplessly at the mercy of his own ego: as when, before the play begins, he has lashed out so wildly on the road, killing Laius and his entire party. This is why, even after he has been a revered king for 15 years, he so easily loses his temper when under pressure: again by the Rule of Three, firstly with Teiresias, then with Creon, then with Jocasta. He himself has been carried away by a terrible hubris. He has become a proud, blind, immature Tyrant - until he is finally brought up against the most almighty nemesis any man could ever have to face.
Only when Oedipus realises that he himself has unwittingly been responsible for all his misfortunes is his armour-plated ego at last utterly crushed. But what do we see then? One of the most striking features of the story is what happens to Oedipus at the end. Although this is a tragedy, he does not die. His wife may have committed suicide. His children may be cursed. He himself may have become an object of revulsion