The idea of the Oedipus complex has so far passed into common language that many people may use the term without knowing much about what it means, still less what its source is. Thus there is a problem in determining whether or to what extent Oedipal theory could resonate in 21st-century narratives. Two texts are key: Oedipus Tyrannus, a play by Sophocles, and Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Freud's psychoanalytic theory, including but not limited to Dreams, grafted the dynamics of the Oedipus narrative onto his ideas of the human personality.
Sophocles' play is built around a problem that Thebes is having: a plague, attributed to the failure to avenge the death its king, Laius. The new king, Oedipus, is determined to find the killer and end the plague. The trouble is, he is the killer, though he has no idea. It was just a difficult man he met on his way to Thebes, where he found fortune and married its widowed queen Jocasta and had two children. The revelations of incest drive Jocasta to suicide, and he is obliged to purify himself, which he does by gouging out his eyes.
What begins as a mission in public policy turns into personal disaster. Almost every word Oedipus speaks is loaded with irony: "I order that no one in this land I rule / give shelter or speak word to the murderer / whoever he be" (36). He continues, warming to his sad and squalid theme:
And now, since I hold the power he once held,
and since, had his hope of issue not miscarried
he and I would have had children from one mother
and so been bound by more ties still . . .
I will fight for the scions of Labdacus (36)
As a matter of fact, Oedipus has fought against rather than for the scion of Labdacus, Laius's father, and he and Laius indeed have had children from one mother. Unfortunately, his fight for the light of truth condemns him to complete darkness.
Freud describes Oedipus as a tragedy of "fate," involving man and the
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