Sophocles' treatment of blindness in the drama accords with Aristotle's reading of the play. It has far greater meaning than that of a symbolically achieved sexual act. Spiritual blindness is equated with obduracy and arrogance--hubris--and towards the end of Oedipus Rex, the physical blinding is already encouraging new insight, awareness, and compassion. When Oedipus could see, he beheld the piercing light of Greece, but he had then less understanding of his fate, less inner vision, and less humility than he is beginning to achieve after he loses that flooding, outer light.
The resemblance between Oedipus and the blinded Gloucester in King Lear often comes to mind. Gloucester says, "I stumbled when I saw" (4.1.21). And when Lear observes, "[Y]et you see how this world goes," Gloucester answers, "I see it feelingly" (4.6.151-52). (Fitts & Fitzgerald 35)
Light, to the ancient Greeks, was beauty, intellect, virtue, indeed represented life itself. The Choragos asks Oedipus, "What god was it drove you to rake black / Night across your eyes?" And Oedipus replies in anguish:
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