Blog 4: Ignorance, Bliss, and Knowledge in Oedipus the King and The Matrix

Knowledge, Ignorance, and Bliss play a major role in both The Matrix and in Oedipus. These concepts hold true throughout both works and are very much intertwined with each other. At the core of these stories the protagonists are at first ignorant to the truth and are living a good life but as their quest for the truth (knowledge) nears its end they come to the realization that their ignorance has made them happy and that the truth they have set forth to look even though it gives them knowledge they wanted, it destroyed their old views.

In the Matrix, Neo is living in a simulated reality that gives him all the comforts of a modern society. Neo wanting to know if it was real gets offered a choice by Morpheus of 2 pills one to gain knowledge and one to go back to what he was before and live in ignorant bliss. Just like in Oedipus, when Oedipus is on the hunt to rid his city of a plague by finding the men responsible for the murder of the king prior to him. In order to find this Oedipus calls upon an old blind prophet named Tiresias who knows the answer to Oedipus question but refuses to tell him about it as stated in line 380 “Let me go home. You must bear your burden to the very end, and I will carry mine, if you’ll agree with me”. This leads Oedipus to get mad and in doing so enrages the prophet into telling him the truth. After the prophet says “Then I would ask you to stand by the very words which you yourself proclaimed and from now on not speak to me or these men. For the accursed polluter of this land is you.”(line 418), this just like Neo shows Oedipus a truth he was not expecting but unlike Neo, Oedipus is able to just brush off as a ploy to take him off his throne and go back to his bliss or so he thinks.

As opposed to the Matrix where once Neo has seen the truth he accepts it and moves on to fulfill his destiny as the "one”, Oedipus realizes the old man was telling the truth and after realizing his truth cannot face it and decides to take a dagger to his eyes and blind himself in order to not see the truth .