Volume 1, Number 12 · February 6, 1964
Mythmanship
By G. S Fraser
Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology
by Northrop Frye
Harcourt, 264 pp., $4.95
The myth of Oedipus is about a man foredoomed by the fates to kill his father and marry his mother; his very efforts to escape from his destiny (though he does not take what seem to the modern mind obvious rational precautions, like avoiding, on the whole, killing elderly men and marrying middleaged women) hurry him on towards achieving it. The plot of Sophocles' play about Oedipus is something quite different. It is about a King of Thebes, a just and conscientious man, who has the duty of tracking down some breaker of taboo whose presence in Thebes is causing a plague. In spite of a number of strong hints that he had better let sleeping dogs lie, King Oedipus proceeds ruthlessly with his investigations; and at length discovers that the criminal is himself. The appeal of the Oedipus myth, if we take the Freudian view of it, is to certain primal desires and horrors; if we take a Gravesian view of it, it is a muddled recollection of the matriarchal society in which the king regularly had to die. But in neither the Freudian nor the Gravesian interpretation has Oedipus any choice about what he does. He is the victim either of blind impulses or of rigid social traditions. He is forced to stand out from the chorus and thus to become sacred in both senses, both a god-like figure and a sacrificial victim. In the Sophoclean interpretation, Oedipus does choose, he chooses to find out at the risk of bringing disaster on himself and in order to avert disaster from Thebes. The Oedipus of Sophocles is thus a fully human person, illustrating the splendor and desolation of human responsibility. We identify with him; we identify with the Oedipus of the artwork, of the tragic plot, as we do not identify with the Oedipus of the primitive myth.
Review, 1437 words
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