Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex
The Oedipus
Complex originated from Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus
Rex. In the tragedy, an oracle prophesizes
that the son born to Liaus, the King of Thebes, and
his queen Jocasta, will kill his father and marry his
mother. Liaus,
after the birth of his son Oedipus, abandons him and leaves him to die. Oedipus, however, lives and the prophecy comes
true. Oedipus grows up and unknowingly
murders his father. He then marries Jocasta, not knowing that she is his mother, and together,
they have four children. When Oedipus
discovers the horrifying truth about his mother and his father, he gauges his
eyes out and lives the rest of his life in great depression. Freud defines the Oedipus Complex
as “the unconscious desire for the death of the parent of the same sex and for
physical union with the parent of the opposite sex” (Wertheimer 133).
