Mary Archer

ENG 320 Professor Rieder

4 Feb. 2015

The Will to Responsibility in Oedipus and Freud

The function of art is to implore people back to self-responsibility. The distinction is

between literature for social indoctrination, and literature for critical self-reflection. Sophocles’

Oedipus the King, by breaking taboo in the service of self-responsibility, defines itself as a work

of art, rather than a work of society’s need for convention. Similarly, Freud’s The Oedipus

Complex (Freud) is a mechanism by which the infantile mind reaches out towards adult power,

responsibility, by an adult act, sex, and so breaks the taboo of incest in the service of some

semblance of independence.

Sex factors into many definitions of independence. Literature can uphold a society’s

ideals at the expense of individual development, or it can create examples of human courage as

in the heroic epic. In the 18th century, virginity was called “virtue” by male and female authors

alike in such novels as Pamela and Love in Excess. In this way, the novels reinforced the modern

social construction of woman as beings who was to have little erotic desire except in the service

of her husband. This same word, virtue, was used in Sidney’s Defense of Poesy to describe the

highest function of literature, in that a work that was fictional could inspire readers into real

personal growth, and so make a real impact on the world. In this sense, virtue is rather like a will

to responsibility, and a hero is like one who could emerge from society into some other sphere

that is limitless in the extent of its possibility.

However, such power comes at the painful price of recognition. In Oedipus, the

protagonist and the namesake of the work comes to realize his own unknowing infamy as the

once dark map of his life is finally brought to life. The light is Apollo’s, who so willed it that he

should defy social convention and sleep with his mother and kill his father. However, Oedipus is

unwilling to remain innocent of responsibility. He could, as assassins do, think themselves but

tools of a more nefarious mind, and divest themselves of actual malice even as they pull the fatal

trigger. So, Oedipus stabs out his own eyes that would see light, and quits himself of Apollo’s

realm into his own dark, but his own, sphere of autonomous dwelling. He says in line 1731-38,

“Apollo Apollo/ it was Apollo, always Apollo, who brought each of my agonies to birth/but

I,/nobody else,I,/I raised these two hands of mine, held them above my head,/ and plunged them

down,/ I stabbed out these eyes (Sophocles).” It is this sense of “nobody else, I,” that is the work

of art.

In the word “I,” there is the sense of unity, like a blending of the power for heroism and

the power for tragedy. The same god gave Oedipus his stars for kingship and for the acts that

would drive him to the terrible act of putting out his eyes. In this “I” of Apollo, and likewise

Oedipus, was the power not only for good or evil but also good and evil. Such is the nature of

responsibility, in that the opposites which we think can only come from two sources, us, the

good folk, and them, the low folk, has to blend into one: ourselves. Tragedy is so effective

because it usually blends nobility, the people who would punish crime, with the criminal, the

people who would receive punishment. So, the law that one passes, one passes on oneself, and is

then accountable for one’s own set of beliefs and contradictions.

However, when an “I” is born as an infant, it is forced to submit to the appearance of

powerlessness and also non-accountability for one’s own survival, as an infant at first cannot

even crawl. So, the infant must accept that one other is responsible for itself. Thus the parent is

given great love and great hate. For Freud, generally the love manifests for the parent of the

opposite gender, and the hate manifests for the parent of the same gender as the infant. The

infant must eventually come out from under its belief of dependency, as it eventually learns to

crawl and to gather its own necessities. The Oedipus Complex serves as a vehicle to adulthood,

as one learns to become separate selves. Freud’s theory can be thought of as universal because

all desire to come into their own being. And though as Oedipus shows, the way may be dark, it is

crucial to make the journey.

Take, for instance, what would have happened if Jocasta, Oedipus’ wife, was successful

in reassuring her husband that all men dream of sleeping with their mothers. Even if the truth

came out, and somehow reconciliation was possible between them, would Oedipus still be a

work of art? The tragedy of Oedipus is not the tragedy of a failed marriage or of a miserable end,

but in the tragedy, and the ultimate relief, that one is responsible in the end for oneself. Oedipus

could not escape or undo his misfortune, but he could set himself on a new course where he was

no longer an instrument of society, even if he was the highest authority possible there, but the

way and means of a new individual code.

Rather than saying that psychoneurotics were normal, Freud says that everyone else was,

in effect, crazy. The office of a king was to say that one man was criminal, and that the rest were

innocent. But, as the chorus says to Oedipus, and as perhaps as Sophocles would say of the

reader, “we are you/ we are you Oedipus/ dragging your maimed foot/ in agony/ and now that I

see your life finally revealed/ your life fused with the god (lines 1514-19).” As like, as they and

Oedipus share the fate of Apollo, they share some of his power, since the god’s best power is his

capacity for responsibility.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, Trans. J. Stratchey. NY: Basic Books, 1955.

Web.

Sophocles, Oedipus The King, Trans. S. Berg and D. Clay. NY: Oxford University Press. 1978.

Print.