# Why does Oedipus blind himself?

> Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

## Answer

Oedipus blinds himself when he can no longer deny that he killed Laius and married Jocasta, his mother. Sight in the play has meant arrogant clarity; after Jocasta hangs herself, he takes brooches from her robe and gouges his eyes so he will not have to look at his children — who are also his siblings — or at the city he polluted.

The act is self-punishment and symbolic reversal: the man who mocked Teiresias’s blindness becomes blind himself, while finally “seeing” truth. He does not suicide; he chooses a living exile of darkness, asking Creon to banish him so Thebes might recover. Classroom answers should tie physical blinding to the blindness-and-sight theme rather than treating it as random horror — Sophocles makes Oedipus’s last voluntary act match the knowledge he demanded.

## Evidence

- [oedipus-rex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oedipus_rex_se/chapters/oedipus-rex.md): Oedipus enters after self-blinding and describes what he has done.

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