Oedipus Redeemed: Seeing Through Listening

An initial play, Oedipus in Jerusalem, related the narrative of Nathan, the biblical prophet, encountering the blinded Oedipus wandering alone outside of Thebes. Nathan brings him to Jerusalem to be tried at the Jewish Sanhedrin. The Greek playwright Sophocles is the prosecutor, and Nathan serves as the defense attorney. Oedipus is acquitted, but he refuses to accept his acquittal, shouting, ""I am guilty! I am guilty of patricide and incest.""Oedipus Redeemed focuses on Nathan and Sophocles combining forces to present Oedipus with two dialogues of historical/biblical characters within the play. The first contrasts the suicide of the Greek Zeno the Stoic after a minor mishap with the life affirmation expressed by the biblical Job after monumental losses. This is designed to uncover the possibility that Oedipus is experiencing shame rather than guilt (after all, he did not commit suicide until after he blinded himself). Nathan and Sophocles focus on the secondary psychological benefit Oedipus has received from insisting on his guilt, and on his coming to terms with the fact that he had blinded himself needlessly if he was innocent. The second dialogue between the biblical prophetess Judith and the blind Greek seer Teiresias focuses on the biblical story of Samson being betrayed by ""following his eyes."" Insight is contrasted with sight. Oedipus's surviving daughter Ismene reunites with Oedipus, telling him she loves and needs him. The play ends with Oedipus's return to the Sanhedrin, tentatively and tearfully accepting his acquittal.

""In this play, Kalman Kaplan, masterfully dramatizes how two great traditions that appear irreconcilably opposed can come together and find a resolution. Kaplan achieves this by brilliantly matching similar narratives delivered by analogous figures from the two opposing camps. While the play is set in the Ancient World where the Greek tradition of Fate opposes the Hebrew God, the dramatic dialogues provide a much needed model for conflict resolution in the divided world of today.""
--Thomas H. Jobe, University of Illinois at Chicago


Kalman J. Kaplan is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. Kaplan has published sixteen books and many articles, and was awarded a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and a Fellowship from the International Fulbright Exchange Program in Israel to develop a program in Biblical Psychology and Psychotherapy. Among Kaplan's books are The Fruit of Her Hands, A Psychology of Hope, Living Biblically, Biblical Psychotherapy, and the first play in this sequence, Oedipus in Jerusalem.