Hurricane Rex

In our discussion of Oedipus rex we came to focus on the plague of the city. In Oedipus Rex, Thebes was plagued and asked their king Oedipus to save them. We were asked to reflect on what the plague of our city is. At first, I was less than exited to do this assignment; the only places I tend to spend my weekends are in my small hometown on long island. The settings for my usual weekend include my home, my friend's basement, and my place of employment; none of these would be useful in finding and observing a plague that would be relevant to a play written centuries ago.

Once I began to analysis the experiences of my rather normal weekend I was able to see similarities in Oedipus’ story. For the most part, Manorville is not really a happening place or united in any event, but this weekend it was foretold that a plague was coming - a hurricane was predicted to hit Long Island. According to the ominous weatherman, this coming storm was going to be a big one. Coming home from school, my mother calls me to come home right away - she needs my help. When I arrived home I helped her tie down all of our patio furniture and assisted her in taking down her wind chime collection, so they do not get blown away in hurricane Earl. After all the hatches where battened down I met my friend to help her shop for food that her and her family can cook and store with out electricity, incase the power went out due to the storm. For the rest of the night no matter what the topic was, or what activity was occurring, someone would check the weather channel or website. When I awoke Friday morning it was already raining, not pouring, but raining enough to count. My mother called me to let me know that traffic was slow and recommended that I leave early for work. I left myself a substantial amount of time to make the trip, figuring I will be able to grab breakfast near work if I was early enough. Normally my commute is about 40 minutes each way, but it took me close to an hour and 15 minutes in light of the storm. It was as if everyone on the road had never seen a little rain before. Anyway, to make a long story short, there turned out to be no hurricane at all. There was barely any wind and the rain wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. People made such a big deal about this possible threat and nothing happened. This made me think about Oedipus Rex; the city is in peril and they look to a psychic to tell them what the future holds. In my city the weatherman tells a prophecy that there will be a hurricane. Only fate holds the answer of what is going to happen; no one is able to say for sure if rain is in the future. Just like in Oedipus rex when the people of Thebes looked to Tiresias for answers to their plague, the people of Long Island looked to the weatherman. In the end everyone turns out blind to what the future holds.