How does Oedipus’s conversation with the Chorus reveal key traits of his character?

OEDIPUS

Aiai aiai, such pain!

Where can I go?

What breeze carries my voice, and where?

Where has fate brought me?

CHORUS

Into a terrible darkness, where nothing can be heard nor seen.

OEDIPUS

Cloud of darkness, unspeakable visitor,

Irresistible and carried by an evil wind… The pain of it! Pain again.

The memory of what I have done Lays into me like a lash on open wounds.

CHORUS

It’s no wonder after what has happened:

You both suffer and cry out again and again.

OEDIPUS

Dear friend, you still help me, and stay to care for a blind man.

Oh, yes,

I know you’re there: you can’t hide.

Although it’s all dark for me, I can hear your voice.

CHORUS

What a terrible thing you have done.

How could you put out your eyes?

What demon inspired you?

OEDIPUS

Apollo did it, Apollo, friends:

He caused all this evil, this misery, and made me suffer.

But it was me —

My hand alone struck out my eyes.

Why should I see?

I am a man for whom sight holds nothing sweet.

CHORUS

I know.

OEDIPUS

What is left for me to see, or love, Or what words could be pleasant to hear?

Dear friends,

Throw me out, throw me away,

One who stinks of death,

A man most hated and most cursed by the gods.

CHORUS

You suffer both in mind and fate.

I wish I had never come to know you.

OEDIPUS

Damned be that shepherd

Who released my feet from their cruel ties,

Snatched me from death, and saved me.

He did me no favor.

If I had died, there would have been no suffering For those close, nor for myself.

CHORUS

That would have been my wish also.

OEDIPUS

I would not have killed my father,

Nor be known as the husband of she who bore me.

Now I am a godless man, child of cursed parents,

A man who conceived children as siblings To those his own father had conceived.

If there is an evil that surpasses evil itself,

Oedipus claims it.

CHORUS

Somehow you were ill-advised, Because you would be better off dead Than living as a blind man.

OEDIPUS

Stop telling me what to do, or that what was done was not done for the best.

When I come to Hades, if I were able to see,

I don’t know how I could look on my father, or my mother, against whom I have committed unforgivable sins.

Would I want to see my children, knowing how they were conceived?

Never with these eyes!

Nor would I want to see the city, the towers, or the holy statues of the gods!

I, the noblest man in Thebes, to my misery cursed myself,

telling everyone to drive out the man whom the gods showed to be a sinner, he who was discovered to be of Laius’ race. How could I look on my city, after I announced my own crime and punishment? Never! If I could have halted the stream of my hearing, I would have welcomed it: to lock up this suffering body in a prison with no sight or sound.

It is sweet to live in thoughts alone, far from evil.

Cithaeron, why did you save me?

Why couldn’t you have killed me straight off, so I would never have revealed to men my origin? Polybus and Corinth, called home of my fathers, how fair you made seem the foulness underneath, and so you raised me.

But I am foulness itself, born from those who were foul.

Three roads, and a hidden valley, a small cluster of trees, and that narrow path where three roads meet:

you drank my blood and the blood of my father that I myself shed.

Do you still remember what I did when I was on my way here?

Marriage, marriage, you made me, and you made more from the same seed:

you brought to light fathers who were brothers,

children of incest, brides who were both wives and mothers to their husbands –

yes, you engendered the most shameful acts that man can do.

But it is not right to speak of what was not right to do;

so for the sake of the gods, hide me away,

as soon as possible, out of sight, or kill me: throw me into the ocean, where you will never see me again. Show yourselves to be good men, and be kind enough to touch this suffering man.

Do it, and don’t be afraid.

I alone am polluted:

I am the only man able to bear this suffering.