Blindness in Oedipus

Oedipus stabs out his eyes at the end of the play, presumably, because the truth about his life is so unbearable that he literally cannot allow himself to see it. This reminded me of the ending of the book "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde. The main character, Dorian, is described as being an extremely attractive and likeable person when the book starts out. He has portrait made of himself that captures his beauty, and somehow, the picture of him start to age, while his own physical appearance stays the same for decades. By the end of the book, he has turned into a terrible person, but his exterior appearance hides this fact from himself. When after many years, he looks at the picture again, he sees a vile, wretched man, and realizing that he has become this person, he shoots himself.

A parallel between the stories is that both men derive their happiness from inflating their ego, and when their self image is unsustainable, their character fails, and they are left directionless, with no hope for salvation. I think this points at a truth about western culture that most people would rather ignore: we all live in comfortable delusion. Psychologist have demonstrated experimentally that people with depression, inferiority complexes, etc, actually have the most object view of themselves, in that they describe themselves closely to the way that others describe them. We are taught that power and prestige lead to happiness, but to this day, there are tribes in the amazon where suicide and depression are practically unknow, where a simple life is a reward in itself.