The Killing Feet

Did Oedipus kill his father and marry his mother? Are the various oracles dealing with the matter fulfilled? The evidence the play Oedipus Tyrannus presents is inconsistent, but audiences and interpreters are almost unanimous in treating it as if it yielded decisive positive answers to these questions. In treating inadequate evidence as decisive they follow in Oedipus’s footsteps, since he does the very same thing. That, indeed, is his tragedy, but also ours—which is precisely the point of the play. True reverence requires a degree of sensitivity to evidence, which—often with disastrous consequences—we are prone not to exhibit.