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1 Oedipus Rex : The Oracles and the Action Author(s): HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. Source: Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Fall 1968), pp Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: Accessed: 13/06/ :12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Texas Studies in Literature and Language.

2 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. Oedipus Rex : The Oracles and the Action WHEN THE ORACLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI TOLD LAIUS THAT HE WOULD die at the hands of his only son, the king of Thebes could but choose between two alternatives. Laius could offer no resistance; he could attempt to live and to rule as if this horrible death did not await him, as if the nature of such a death did not matter. Or he could attempt somehow to evade this prophecy. Such an attempt would not seem like rebellion against a divine commandment, but it would be, in effect, an effort to deny the validity of the oracle's omniscience. When Jahweh commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the Hebrew patriarch could also choose between two alternatives. Abraham could obey without resistance. This would involve a single action, the horror of which would not lie, as it would for Laius, in the agony of suspenseful waiting, but in the one act itself. Although the revelation from Jahweh was clear, obedience was not inevitable, for Jahweh did not state that this sacrifice definitely would take place. Abraham seems never to have wavered, never to have considered resistance to the commandment. For him there was no possible evasion or rationalization as to the will of the Lord. The revelation was direct; there was no role for an intermediary. In the simplicity of the Old Testament narrative, the compliance of Abraham is immediate, so that somehow his human weakness, his fallibility, never seems to have a chance to operate. There is no time for doubt. Abraham complies. The choice offered Laius is vital to the action of Oedipus Rex. It proves necessary as the initial act from which all in the play descends, and - more important for interpretation - it serves as a close parallel, one that presents its dilemma much more clearly, to the first major choice and act of the hero himself. In almost identical terms, the oracle tells Oedipus that he will kill his father - and then adds that he will marry his mother. The oracle leaves Oedipus the same choice and the same limitation it earlier had given Laius, and the decision that Oedipus makes is the same. He attempts to rebel and thereby preventhe oracle's coming true. Sophocles points up this parallel by delaying his exposition of these two oracles - the general nature of which his spectators could certainly be expected to remember - until just before the mid-point of his play, and by then telling us about them within seventy lines of each other in two long narrative speeches.

3 338 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. The action in Oedipus Rex which fulfills both oracleshows that their statements necessarily gain the force of a command - like that of Jahweh to Abraham. With very few exceptions, classical scholars agree that the statements of the oracles are meant, at the very least, to represent within the play the true and reliable word of the gods. If the audience and hero are expected to recognize the oracles as omniscient and therefore the words as a command - an assumption I will consider later - the action of Sophocles' play dramatizes what happens to the man who, unlike Abraham, attempts to live as if this command had never been given. Any effort to comprehend the action of the play must come to terms with such problems as the extent of Oedipus' responsibility for his acts, his innocence or guilt, his knowledge or ignorance, the operation of free will or of divine predestination. And any adequate explanation of these problems must link the "present action" of the play, the term I shall use for the representation stage, to the "longer action," the initiating event of which is the statement by the oracle. Criticism of Oedipus Rex has often been hampered by concentration upon only one of these two actions. When we start our discussion with the oracles, their crucial role might seem to be self-evident. Yet almost all influential interpretations - while never completely ignoring oracular predictions - have distorted the play by failing to show how different reactions to the oracles pervade it. If the writer emphasizes the initiating oracles and not the dramatic present, the play often becomes a study of human futility in a universe of predestination. If, on the other hand, the writer deals mainly with the dramatic present, he often ignores the reaction of Oedipus to the oracles, treats their divine statements as no more than necessary background, and then judges the hero as innocent or guilty on the basis of his secular or political character. Cedric Whitman, in the most provocative and controversial recent book about Sophocles, tabulates the scholars' opinions and finds that - with no consistency - most find Oedipus free from control by the gods and innocent of major moral wrongdoing.1 My summaries of alleged misinterpretations probably seem unfair. Yet there are numerous examples of views that read convincingly but fail to show how the oracles influence the dramatic action. Friedrich Schiller wrote in 1797 : The most involved action... has, of course, already happened, and consequently falls wholly beyond the domain of tragedy... That which has 1 Cedric H. Whitman, Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 268.

4 Oedipus Rex: The Oracles and the Action 339 happened, in being unalterable, is naturally far more terrible, and the fear that something might have happened affects the mind quite differently from the fear that something may happen. The Oedipus is, as it were, only a tragic analysis. Everything is already in existence, and has only to be unravelled.2 That this argument at first seems credible demonstrates how successfully Schiller has led us to adopt his point of view. For him, everything is seen from the perspective of the oracles. The dramatic action is clearly subordinated to the simple unraveling of that which is foredoomed. But for the dramatic present of Sophocles, the new discoveries of the hero and his consequent reactions, not a long-finished act, provide the dramatic focus. Both the faults of Oedipus' character and his greatestriumphs can only come in relation to the horrendous divine prediction. We cannot respond either to his guilt or to his glory if we do not account for his attitudes toward the oracles as the play opens and his growth as he applies to the word of the gods the same intense and thorough search he applies to the problems of the polis. These virtues do not exist before the play and can only come into being as it develops. To this essential point I shall return shortly. But if undue exaggeration of the long-accomplished predictions deprives the hero of both his freedom and his achievement, unduly narrow concepts of the dramatic action deprive it of its rationality and its appropriateness. Although many have recognized that the action of Oedipus shows the growth of the hero from ignorance to knowledge, I think no one has satisfactorily shown that his ignorance is self-willed. Oedipus has been told the truth and he has refused to recognize it - or even test it. When, for example, C. M. Bowra attempts to transform the so-called ignorance of Oedipus from the starting point for his growth to selfknowledge, and makes it instead an excuse for his weakness - "The fight againsthe oracles is not really wrong as long as it is ignorant" - he fails to take into accoun the reasons for this ignorance.3 When H. D. F. Kitto writes, "There are no exceptions to the decrees of the gods," that "Oedipus' innocence can't save him,"4 he fails to recognize that Oedipus is not innocent. Both Oedipus and Laius were told the truth in simple and direct terms by the oracle, however harsh and difficult to accept. Neither could plead ignorance or innocence without denying the very validity of the oracle. However stark this responsibility, it could 2 From a letter to Goethe, October 2, 1797, in The Correspondence Between Schiller and Goethe, Vol. I (London, 1877), translated by L. Dora Schmitz, reprinted Albert Cook, ed., Oedipus Rex: A Mirror for Greek Drama (Belmont, Calif., 1963), p Maurice Bowra, Sotohoclean Traeedy (Oxford, 1944), o H. D. F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy (London, 1950), p. 144.

5 340 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. not be evaded. In their efforts to escape, the innocence of Laius, of Jocasta, and of Oedipus vanished. Although the much more subtle and complex criticism of William Arrowsmith is probably the most stimulating recent work on Greek tragedy, it seems to me that in his attack on the Aristotelian or pseudo- Aristotelian concept of the tragic flaw, he too tends to ignore the dual action of Oedipus Rex: Whether as doctrine or habit, the attempto find a tragic flaw in Greek plays seems to me a persistent stumbling-block. If you really look at the Oedipus, for instance, it is immediately clear the Oedipus' tragic flaw is hard to discover: one wants to know - if you begin with the Aristotelian habit - just what in the hero's nature or his acts makes him suffer as hideously as he does, and the obvious answers - his anger, his treatment of Greon and Tiresias, his attempt to avoid his fate - are all unsatisfactory, if satisfactory, indict the gods that could afflict a man so grievously for such an offense.5 Oedipus' temper and his impatience do seem trivial compared with his affliction. And, like more facile formulas of the tragic flaw, considerations of his "attempto avoid his fate" must distinguish clearly action in the longer plot from that in the shorter plot or dramatic present. If the oracles impose upon Oedipus the limits of horrible acts that he cannot avoid, we must recognize that whatever flaws may be in his character, these cannot be the cause of an already predetermined act. In the longer action, Oedipus must kill his father, and any flaws of character cannot make him commithis act. They can only help create a character consistent with the inevitable act. It is perfectly conceivable that the hero should have many traits compatible with the murder of Laius. And he does - his rage, his impatience, his hybris, his ignoring the gods. Those traits will be primary that explain most fully why Oedipus acted as he did. And the explanation that comes closesto being a full one will include his relation to the oracle that foretold his act, that came true in the very process of Oedipus' effort to deny it. On the other hand, the shorter action - the on-stage representation - focuses not upon the long-finished fulfillment of the prophecy but upon the hero's discovery of what he had done, of who he is, and his consequent reaction to these discoveries. For this plot (unlike the longer one), Oedipus' character can determine and cause action. And with this freedom comes a different order of probability. In the play, Oedipus must relate his life to the revelation of the oracle. 5 William Arrowsmith, "The Criticism of Greek Tragedy," Tulane Drama Review, III (March 1959), p. 50.

6 Oedipus Rex: The Oracles and the Action 341 If he is to do this, there is no improbability in his learning he is living under an illusion concerning his birth. There may be coincidence or improbability in the manner the prediction of the oracle comes about and in the way Oedipus finally learns the truth. But that the prediction has come true in some way is not improbable - it is certain. The dramatic probability of the oracles must not cause us to forgethat they do not impose this discovery on Oedipus. In the plot of the present action, the hero progresses from being the mere plaything of forces of predestination to become the controller of significant choices that remain possible to him. In the shorter plot, the character of Oedipus will include and transcend those traits essential to the fulfillment of the oracle. He will go beyond that which is foretold - not by denying or ignoring it, but by making himself the daemon suggested at line 1455 when he claims, "No sickness and no other thing will kill me. I would not have been saved from death if not for some strangevil fate."6 This vision of course is presented fully in the Oedipus at Colonus. Because the main theoretical part of this paper attempts to show how the events that precede the dramatic present of the play shape its action - and because specific detailed exposition of these past events is delayed until nearly half the play is over - I will discuss only briefly furthereferences to the oracles and the gods. Bearing in mind the chronological sequence as well as the representational one, we can see much more clearly how Oedipus, once he recognizes his evasion, consistently grows in stature, transcends his flaws, and achieves tragic dignity. We can realize more clearly what the character of the hero actually represents in the opening scenes of the play when we become conscious of the implications of the oracles to Laius and to Oedipus, which have already been fulfilled. In relation to the longer action, he is the man who has already carried out the predictions of the oracle, but who seems to have buried all thought of these predictions. Already when he arrived at Thebes, Oedipus had fulfilled the prophecy to Laius, the first half of the message he himself had received at Delphi. Still he could succeed in answering the Sphinx to free Thebes from this scourge. That this apparent superhuman courage and wisdom, supposedly a gift of the gods, is needed to help fulfill the second half of the prophecy is not yet clear to any character on stage. Oedipus' opening speeches show him to be a vigorous, efficient, and respected ruler. In contrasto the initiative and concern for superhuman pow- 6 All quotations and line references in this essay will be taken from the translation by David Grene, Sophocles (Chicago, 1942).

7 342 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. ers he has demonstrated in sending to the oracle, any blind spot in the hero will draw our attention. The spectator, who knows the whole story and who sees the strength of Oedipus, should quickly recognize the importance of the priest's mixture of mild rebuke with praise for his tyrant: We have Not come... because we thought of you as of a God, but rather judging you the first of men in all the chances of this life and when we mortals have to do with more than man.... it was God that aided you, men say, and you are held with God's assistance to have saved our lives. Now Oedipus, Greatest in all men's eyes, here falling at your feet we all entreat you, find us some strength fo rescue. The tone is set. Oedipus is admired as chief among men for his accomplishments, his intelligence, his forcefulness. These are signs of his alliance with the gods. The priest carefully notes that Oedipus is first both in all the chances of this life and when we mortals have to do with more than man. Sophocles here insists that we attend not only to the secular political role of Oedipus, but also to his dealings with the gods. But because we and the Athenian audience are familiar with the myth, it should be clear immediately that this alliance is illusory and can remain only as long as Oedipus ignores the predictions of the Delphic oracle. Our awareness of the background provided by the longer action also makes it more striking that Oedipus has anticipated the request of the priest and the petitioners. He tells them that he has already sent Creon to the oracle at Delphi for instructions. It is surprising not only that the priest must beg help from the ruler in dealing with the gods; we should also notice that Oedipus himself has thought first of requesting help from the oracle and that he seems to have complete faith in it. That he chooses this course of action in order to combat the plague suggests to us that he would normally rely upon the oracle whenever his own reason could offer no solution. For an alert spectator this is immediatevidence that we should not ignore the earlier oracle to Oedipus simply because the hero seems to have forgotten it. When Creon returns from Delphi it becomes eviden that however the humans may contrive to ignore the prophecy, the gods no longer will. Oedipus can remain king only of a devastated, plague-ridden

8 Oedipus Rex: The Oracles and the Action 343 Thebes. He has already fulfilled the oracle. He has killed Laius and married Jocasta. Yet the gods apparently have permitted this outrage and pollution. The city and the royal couple have long remained happy; Oedipus has been revered as ruler and as man. The presence on a Sophoclean stage of a superbly self-confident and efficient man may (at least until Oedipus at Colonus), be a safe signal for an imminent fall, but here we see only a man effectively and admirably attempting to combat the mysterious plague. Only with the return of Creon does it become clear that the gods have finally decided to act, to initiate the process by which Oedipus learns he has killed Laius. The early scenes of the play contrast for us the Oedipus who is foremost in seeking the truth, in finding the killer whose exile this third oracle demands, with the Oedipus who seems incapable of even thinking about the earlier oracle he has received. The extreme irony that derives from his violent curses againsthe murderer of Laius are too well-known to need discussion. But Oedipus not only makes his own fate much more severe than the oracle requires - "If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth/i pray that I myself may feel my curse" - he links himself closely to the oracle - "So I stand forth a champion of the god." When the chorus demands overt action from the god - as it will at other crucial points in the play - "Since Phoebus set the quest/it is his part to tell who the man is," Oedipus replies, "Right, but to put compulsion on the Gods/against their will - no man can do that." In light of the shorter present action this statement seems unexceptionable, the clear vision by the ruler who is the ally of the gods; but from the perspective of the long action it condemns the speaker who in effect has tried to deny the validity of the oracle. This contrast between our two perspectives on Oedipus receives further emphasis in the next scene when Tiresias enters - on the choral lines, "Here the godly prophet comes/ in whom alone of mankind truth is native." This native truth is apparently unlike the skills of Oedipus, even though the priest has acclaimed him as "first of men/ in all the chances of this life and when/ we mortals have to do with more than man." Tiresias' truth first displays itself as fallible. He does not desire to possess his truth : Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that's wise! This I knew well, but had forgotten it, else I would not have come here. Tiresias, like the Theban shepherd who later recognizes Oedipus, remembers the whole truth and begs, "Let me go home. It will be easiest

9 344 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. for us both." A view that seems to prize convenience more than the survival of the state or the truth of the divine oracle can only draw curses from the king. And when the erroneous accusations by Oedipus of political treachery goad Tiresias against his will to reveal, "You are the land's pollution," Oedipus can only repeat in disbelief his accusations. The king's sneers lead the blind prophet to present for the first time in the play the content of the earlier oracle to Oedipus, "With those you love best you live in foulest shame unconsciously." When Oedipus asks if Tiresias expects to "live to laugh at it hereafter," the prophet answersimply, "Yes, if the truth has anything of strength." And Oedipus in his rage does not deny this truth, but with great irony continues, "It does, but not for you." Because he cannot even conceive the possible truth of the oracle and of Tiresias' statement, the king angrily accuses Creon and brings on the narration of past oracles, of apparent untruths, and of the evidence that finally proclaims his own identity. As Oedipus and Jocasta become more and more certain of his identity, their references to the oracles and the gods become more and more desperate. After the lengthy narrative speeches just mentioned, before the entry of the Corinthian messenger, we hear the crucial statements about the gods by Jocasta, by Oedipus, and by the chorus. Jocasta and Oedipus express the most extreme skepticism in the play. Particularly important is her speech: "Loxias declared that the king should be killed/ by his own son. And that poor creature did not kill him surely - / for he died himselfirst. So far as prophecy goes, henceforward/ I shall not look at the right hand or the left." But their skepticism arises partially from the horror of their immediate situation and the pressure under which the royal pair find themselves. That both repeatedly pray to Apollo during Oedipus' quest for the truth is no sign of conscious hypocrisy. These prayers simply show to what depths the two predictions to Laius and Oedipus have been submerged in the minds of Oedipus and Jocasta. Their turn to a complete denial is far more than a momentary statement of despair arising from their immediate position. It is finally an acknowledgment on the conscious level of the implications of their actions, actions which had long been incompatible with any sincere belief in the infallibility of the oracles. When the oracle foretold a situation so horrible that Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus could not face its sure approach, they could either consciously reject the essential omniscience of the predicter or repress this particular example of its omniscience. For as long as they could, they chose the latter. Only when the plague, the revelation to Creon, and investigations of Tiresias make such a willed inconsistency impossible, do Oedipus and Jocasta verbalize the

10 Oedipus Rex: The Oracles and the Action 345 denial of the oracles. This denial has long been implicit in every action. When the chorus of Thebans finally refuses to follow Oedipus and Jocasta in their rejection of the oracles, it demands a clear sign to all that "The oracles concerning Laius which are old and dim" be proved "fit for all men's hands to point at." Here the chorus gives evidence of a profound mystical faith, praying for the demonstration of the validity of an oracle which is apparently impossible : that a dead king be shown killed by a son who was dead long before his father. Withouthis proof, the chorus sings, "Apollo is nowhere clear in honor; God's service perishes." There can be no sure divinity in which to believe so "why should I honor the gods in the dance?" That such far-fetched, seemingly impossible demands upon the oracle are carried out certainly should show that Sophocles does intend that the Delphic oracle be treated within the play as absolutely reliable - as true even when reason or common sense would seem to indicate its falsity. As I have noted, most criticsimply treat the truthfulness of the oracles as an assumption. Whitman is the significant exception, arguing that the choral ode represents only popular beliefs, that "there was no creed or faith that bound one to its infallibility."7 He goes on to argue that Sophocles, like most contemporary Athenian intellectuals, rejected the oracles as an old-fashioned superstition. But, whatever we may think of this hypothesis for Sophocles' personal belief, our concern must be with how the oracular statement affects the action within the play - what happens to those who believe it and to those who reject it. As opposed to the pretending seers, and even to the blind prophet Tiresias, who may err, there is no preserved instance in Sophocles of a Delphic oracle's failing accuracy in prediction. Whatever Sophocles may have believed concerning the omniscience of such an oracle, it seems clear that he uses it without exception in his extant plays as a dramatic device which his audience may immediately and fully accept. Neither chance nor probability can explain this unvarying accuracy. Mere chance could not maintain the ethical and causal consistency we find recurring through Sophocles' plays as his heroes are tested by a divine prediction. That the disaster for these heroes - Oedipus, Creon, Antigone, Deineira, Hercurcs, Ajax - so often followsome apparent disclosure of the "will of the gods" suggests the failure of the mortals to react properly to whatever evidence they are given of a divine plan or will. When an oracle is given as to Laius and Oedipus, the consequent action shows that they should take it into account as an essential force in determining what they do. 7 Whitman, p. 136.

11 346 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. To what extent, then, may we interpret the responses of the Delphic oracle in terms of its traditional enigmas? What opportunity for misunderstanding is there in the message itself? Whitman, referring to the Trachiniae, claims "as usual in Sophocles, the oracle is a little confused, a not-quite-direct statement of futurity."8 Although such statements as "You will die at the hands of your son" and "You will kill your father and lie with your mother" surely seem straight forward and direct, is there some germ for deception? Only two possibilities for misunderstanding the oracle are suggested in the play. When Oedipus states that he may have "killed" his "father," Polybus, only if the old king of Corinth died through longing for his lost son, we see an excellent example of figurative interpretation of language. Here such wishful thinking demonstrates that Oedipus has clearly understood the import of the oracular statement. We could imagine similar possible evasions of a literal interpretation of the oracle. But no such evasion - expressed through figurative or symbolic language - could capture the direct immediacy of the oracular prophecy. Within the frame of reference of the play, only the literal violent killing embodies the horror of the prediction, its inescapable fulfillment. A second opportunity for misunderstanding - the evasion which actually makes possible for Oedipus, Jocasta, and the Thebans such a life of illusion - arises from the form of the prediction. The statements of the oracle are always in terms of relationships (father, mother, son) ; since no names are used, errors in identification become a potential escape hatch. When tested, these methods of evading the prediction seem superficial, easily shattered by any concerted efforto delve into the truth of the prophecies. At least in these two statements of the oracle, Sophocles allows very little escape from the simple literal meaning: "Your son shall kill you" - "you shall kill your father." As the action of the play unrolls, any ambiguity results from a feeble effort by the royal couple to distorthe uncloude direct revelation. Oedipus, then, as the play opens, shows his strength and intelligence except in relation to the predictions by the Delphic oracle. That, even after his journey to Delphi, he has failed to learn that the Corinthian rulers are not his parents, shows that his vaunted intelligence is blind when directed toward the truth of this prophecy. Without knowledge there can be guilt and pollution- but no cleansing or restoration. Oedipus grows as he now seeks the truth in face of resistance by a series of sympathetic characters who in their weakness come to serve as foils for the mounting courage of the hero. Both Tiresias, with his mystic 8 Ibid., p. 108.

12 Oedipus Rex: The Oracles and the Action 347 vision as a spokesman for Apollo, and the old servant, who alone recognized Oedipus upon his arrival in Thebes, insist, repeatedly resisting threats, that Oedipus is better withouthe knowledge he seeks. As Jocasta's illusion is shattered, she too begs her son to stop his quest. Among her last words as she rushes off in despair to kill herself is the exclamation, "God keep you from the knowledge of who you are!" But their opposition is futile, and it comes to represent only the view of those who cannot attain the vision, the sense of responsibility, and the wisdom finally acquired by Oedipus himself. The action of Oedipus Rex is the discovery by Oedipus that he has fulfilled the oracles by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. The dramatic focus is upon the hero and what he does - not upon the oracles or those parts of the action that have been predetermined, nor upon what we are to think of the morality of the gods, nor even upon what Oedipus should have done. Whitman argues: The Oedipus does not accuse the gods as explicitly as does the Trachiniae. But the whole action... and the character of the hero... constitute... a detailed picture of the irrational and unjustifiable evil inwrought the texture of life, against which the greatest natural and moral endowments struggle in vain. The lack of any real counterpoise between sin and punishment, such as Aeschylus believed in, has made the play bewildering, but that is exactly Sophocles' purpose.9 To accept this argument, we must ignore the dramatic action of the play. Unlike Oedipus at Colonus, in which Oedipus repeatedly blames the gods, in the earlier play the reasons for the oracles are never questioned. Oedipus accepts the blame and we attend to his growth in knowledge, in courage, and in character as he eliminates his single mental block, his self-willed ignoring of the oracle. Just as Sophocles gives no answer as to the purpose of the gods - except the final statement of the hero that he is being saved for some definitend - he makes no efforto tell us what Oedipus should do when he first receives the oracle. Surely any deliberateffort to hasten its fulfillment would be inconceivable and wrong: he would kill the wrong "father." But Sophocles does show us the results when Oedipus tries to evade the truth. The Oedipus we see as the play begins only seems strong. He cannot attain the dignity and grandeur of a tragic hero until he learns to face the single horrible truth that he has been unable to test. Because tragedy requires an intense, significant struggle and suffering by the protagonist, the prediction and fulfillment of the oracle are not the tragedy of»ibid., p. 127.

13 348 HERBERT S. WEIL, JR. Oedipus. Because Oedipus, before the plague, could not face the divine foreknowledge, his simple fulfilling of the prediction, like that of Laius before him, cannot embody tragedy. Both escape suffering their assumed ignorance. Though in a situation suffused with latent tragedy, their failureither to accept the divine statement or to struggle against it allows no suffering, no purging. While he ignores the oracle, Oedipus wallows in illusion. His whole suffering is postponed, the sore remains festering. Sophoclean tragedy exists not only on the human level but also in the human-divine relationship. Only when Oedipus faces this relation clearly does his horrible fate become tragic. Not because he defies the gods, but in spite of this defiance, does he attain high tragedy. Even had he accepted the gods' knowledge when he is tested - as he finally does - Oedipus still must fulfill his destiny. Saved by no deus ex machina, as were Abraham and Isaac, he becomes a still more tragic figure. For us the choice is simpler. We too may ignore Oedipus' hybris in denying the gods' prediction. As long as we do, we shall remain near the surface of the play, feeling but a shade of its force. University of Connecticut Storrs