As Oedipus the elder accepts the infirmities of old age and the support of his daughter Antigone, Oedipus the king proves powerful up to the very end of his life when he gives his blessing not to the sons who had exiled him from Thebes, but to King Theseus who shelters him in his old age. In the second tragedy of the Oedipus Cycle of Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, this affirmation is maintained. The study begins by noting that Oedipus ascended the throne of Thebes not by parricide but by answering the riddle of the Sphynx and affirming the continuity of the life cycle which his father denied. Themes ignored in developmental theory but axiomatic in gerontology are considered in this study of the elder Oedipus.
Where Freud looks to the son, however, I look to the father, who set the tragedy in motion by attempting to murder his infant son. As Freud does, this consideration of the tragedy of Oedipus takes as its point of departure the inevitability of the confrontation between father and son. Thus, he fulfilled it by killing a stranger who proved to be his father. The Oedipus complex of Freud is based on the inevitability of the tragic fate of a man who fled his home to escape the prophecy of parricide.
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