Why does Oedipus kill himself?

Answer 1

Oedipus ripped out the golden brooches from Jocasta's dress. Then he savagely stabbed himself many times in the eyes, blood splattered everywhere from his ruined sockets. Basically, he stabs his eyes out with her brooches.

Answer 2

He wants himself to suffer - the Greeks and Romans were really into that particular motif. Oedipus has witnessed such pain he gouges out his eyes so that vision may never trouble him again. Also, by comitting suicide (hence dying) he would come to Hades where he would meet his mother and father -- whom he couldn't face out of guilt and disgrace.

Also if he had committed suicide that would have been the end of the play and the theater goer would have felt cheated out of another hour of drama.

Answer 3

A sentence of execution or exile and a self blinding are the punishments that Theban King Oedipus inflicts upon himself. The sentence is inflicted upon him, by his own words. He says that a punishment of execution or exile will be carried out even if the perpetrator or perpetrators of Theban King Laius' murder should be found within his own household. The irony lies in the fact that Oedipus indeed is the killer of his father and his sovereign, Laius.

The blinding is inflicted upon him, by his own decision and through his own action. He learns that Theban Queen Jocasta, his wife and his mother, is dead. He realizes that the tragedy of his life, as a fated killer and sex offender, has been there for him to see all along. But he has seen nothing. So he's the one who takes the brooches from Jocasta's robe and plunges them into both eyes.

Answer 4

That the divinely-defined punishment of Laius' murderer is execution or exile stops Oedipus from killing himself in the play "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. - 405 B.C.E.).

Specifically, the killing of a king is an offense against the gods, and the punishment of a king is determined by divinely expressed will through oracles and sacrifices. The oracle at Apollo's shrine specifies the two options in punishing the guilty. Oedipus as king promises to see the punishment carried out.

Answer 5

Theban King Oedipus doesn't kill himself. It's his wife and mother, Theban Queen Jocasta, who kills herself. Oedipus well may have felt like killing himself after finding out that he's a murderer and a sex offender. But he doesn't do so. Instead, he takes the brooches that Jocasta had been wearing and blinds himself.

Answer 6

Blind himself is what Theban King Oedipus does. He discovers that just about nothing is what or whom he thinks. For example, his parents aren't Corinthian King Polybus and Queen Merope. Instead, they're Theban King Laius, whom he murdered; and Theban Queen Jocasta, whom he wedded and bedded. His daughters Antigone and Ismene, and his sons Eteocles and Polyneices, aren't just his children. They also are his half brothers. His brother-in-law Theban King Creon isn't just a relative by marriage. He's an uncle by blood. In fact, the two have ancestors in common through their descent from Cadmus, Thebes' founder and first king.

All of this passes right before his seeing eyes. But Oedipus doesn't pick up on any of this. He's warned that he's fated to kill his father. Yet he goes right ahead and kills a man who's old enough to be his father, and whom he resembles. Likewise is he fated to marry his mother. Yet he goes right ahead and marries a woman who's old enough to be his mother.

It's more than Oedipus can bear when he discovers that, in his case, appearances aren't deceiving. The man who looks old enough to be his father indeed is Oedipus' father. The woman who looks old enough to be his mother, and may or may not share some similar features, indeed is his mother.

Answer 7

They came to a 3 way intersectiona nd out of pride, Oedipus wanted the right away, laios didn't want to give it and so the legend goes that he killed him.