In their essay “Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor,” David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder explain that, while many readers are not aware of it, examples of disability are pervasive in literature. This prevalence, they argue, creates an interesting paradox: while people with disabilities are a marginalized and oppressed community within society, within literature they become central to the story (Mitchell and Snyder 209-210). Yet, as Mitchell and Snyder reveal, this employment of disabilities in literature is still highly problematic. They contend that there are two main ways in which a text relies upon disability: narrative prosthesis and the materiality of metaphor. The first, narrative prosthesis, is a concept which explores how disability is used as a crutch for the storyline to lean on (206). Disability constitutes the driving force behind the narrative; it justifies the need for the story itself (209). Their second notion, the materiality of metaphor, describes how disabilities provide literature with representational power that is grounded in the tangible, disabled body (205). The disability, seen as something that embodies meaning, is depicted as a metaphor, often for social or individual collapse or cultural deviance. One example of this pervasive, problematic reliance on disabilities in literature is Oedipus Rex, a famous play written by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. In Oedipus Rex, disability is instrumentalized by the narrative both as a prosthetic to advance the plot and as a material metaphor to tangibly represent transgressive and arrogant behavior.
In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus’ disability is the consequence of his feet being pinned together when he was an infant. While his impairment does not appear frequently in the text, it plays an important role in the narrative as a prosthetic. Mitchell and Snyder maintain that, to justify the need for a story, the narrative must prove the exceptionality of its main character (209). To accomplish this, they contend, narratives often make their characters “stand out” as a result of a disability (Mitchell and Snyder 210). In Sophocles’ play, Oedipus’ disability provides him with the distinctiveness required to establish his centrality to the narrative. In fact, it is his disability that allows him to become the king of Thebes in the first place. While not presented in the play itself, in the wider mythology of Oedipus, Oedipus is crowned king of Thebes for successfully solving the riddle of the Sphinx and saving the city from her terror. In the translation by David Mulroy, the riddle of the Sphinx is as follows: “On earth there is a two-footed and four-footed creature, whose voice is one. It is also three-footed” (Sophocles 91). According to Mitchell and Snyder, Oedipus is able to solve the riddle by realizing that the answer to the third part of the Sphinx’s query, the three-footed creature, is a man who walks with a cane; thus, it is Oedipus’ experience with disability that imbues him with a unique perspective, and, as a result, the necessary knowledge to be able to uncover the riddle’s correct answer (213). In short, the narrative justifies its focus on Oedipus by making him stand out as a unique figure through his disability. Therefore, disability in Oedipus Rex is instrumentalized by the narrative as a necessary force in propelling the plot forward, thus aligning with Mitchell and Snyder’s concept of narrative prosthesis.
However, it is not Oedipus’ disability that inaugurates the story, but the cultural anomaly of the plague inflicted upon the city of Thebes. In their essay, Mitchell and Snyder describe that “[t]he very need for a story is called into being when something has gone amiss with the known world, and, thus, the language of a tale seeks to comprehend that which has stepped out of line” (209). Sophocles’ play commences with the citizens’ pleas to Oedipus. They beg for his aid and leadership in face of the sickness inflicted upon the city, causing their harvests to fail and their women to give birth to stillborn children (Sophocles 14). This sickness represents the aberration that the story seeks to explain. When Creon returns with the news from the oracle, he recounts that in order to release the city from the plague, they must punish the murderer of the previous king, Laius, with exile, forcing them out of Thebes (Sophocles 9). Upon hearing this news, Oedipus vows to his citizens that he will find the killer and save the city from its ruins. Therefore, the narrative itself is driven forward by Oedipus’ quest to solve the mystery of Laius’ murder and cure the city’s plague, thus explaining and solving the cultural deviance that justifies the need for the story.
Yet, as readers learn, Oedipus’ search throughout the story becomes not just a search for the murderer of Laius, but ultimately a search—unknowingly to Oedipus—to discover the secrets of his own past. In this quest, his disability becomes the key clue in solving the mystery. In brief, it is his lame foot that ties him to his past and reveals his true relationship to Laius and Jocasta. After the citizen of Corinth arrives in Thebes, he reveals to Oedipus that Polybus was not his true father, detailing how, when Oedipus was just a baby, he found him with his ankles pierced in the wooded glades of Citheron (Sophocles 63-64). In fact, it is the citizen himself who advises Oedipus that “[he] ought to let [his] ankles testify” (64). In other words, Oedipus’ impairment, the lasting consequence of his pinned feet, serves as tangible proof of his own history and identity. When Laius’ man is summoned, he corroborates the citizen of Corinth’s story, telling how Oedipus, with his feet yoked together by Laius, was given to him by the king to expose in the woods and leave to die. Finally, Oedipus is able to see the truth: that he is the son and murderer of Laius—the prophecy spoken from the oracle that he had been trying to outrun, had come true all along. Consequently, Oedipus’ disability constitutes the key piece of evidence that allows Oedipus to realize he has succumbed to his fate. Yet, as Mitchell and Snyder claim, after temporarily serving the narrative in the way required by the story, the disability is then quickly forgotten, “left behind as a purely biological fact” (210). Accordingly, in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus’ disability never resurfaces in the storyline after it is momentarily utilized as the proof establishing Oedipus’ true identity. This employment of disability in literature is problematic because it fails to present the actual real lived experiences of disabled individuals (Mitchell and Snyder 213). In the case of Oedipus, readers never learn about how the disability affects Oedipus or what his daily experience of living with a disability is like. Instead, the narrative exploits the impairment as an opportunistic crutch enabling the story to accomplish the necessary progression of its plotline; therefore, the presentation of Oedipus’ disability in the play is a clear example of narrative prosthesis.
Furthermore, the disability of Oedipus also maps onto Mitchell and Snyder’s concept of the materiality of metaphor, as his lame feet become a symbol for his cursed and inescapable fate. Laius, in binding his own son’s feet together, was attempting to escape the destiny inscribed by the oracle that detailed how his heir would become his murderer. While not presented in Sophocles’ play, in the wider mythology Laius had committed a transgressive sexual act before the birth of Oedipus (Folkerth). According to Mitchell and Snyder, literature relies on disabilities through their embodiment of social or individual collapse (205). In other words, “[n]arratives turn signs of cultural deviance into textually marked bodies” (Mitchell and Snyder 209). Accordingly, Oedipus’ lame feet can be understood as a symbolic symptom of his father’s sexual transgressions. During his speech near the end of the play, Oedipus proclaims that he is “an evil man with evil roots” (82). In this statement, Oedipus calls attention to the inheritance of his destiny. As revealed by the imagery of the roots, Oedipus acknowledges that his evil fate was not just his own, but was passed down to him from his own father. Therefore, his disability becomes a metaphorical mark of this familial curse.
Moreover, Oedipus’ disability also signifies his inability to escape the prophecy prescribed to him. In addition to ideas of inheritance, the evil roots from his speech also signify the deeply embedded nature, and hence the inevitability, of his cursed fate. Furthermore, with his impairment causing a physical hindrance to his movement, his lame feet can be interpreted as a metaphor for his immobility in relation to his fate. The lines of the chorus often present this metaphorical signifier of his disability. For instance, the chorus chimes that, “[w]retched, sorrowful, and glum, lame of foot and all alone, [Oedipus] flees the prophecies that come from Gaea’s navel stone” (31). In this deliverance, by pairing his real and tangible impairment with his figurative mobility as he flees from the prophecies, the chorus hints at the metaphorical layer to Oedipus’ disability. Later on in the play, the chorus solidifies this metaphorical representation of Oedipus’ impairment, announcing that:
Hubris breeds a tyrant. When hubris satisfying its yen for harmful substances ascends
the topmost beam to where it ends, there must come next a sharp descent that skillful
feet cannot prevent. God, keep the city in your grip. I’ll always trust your leadership.
May evil fate reduce to dust the man of haughty word and deed who scoffs at gods and
what is just to satisfy his wretched greed. (Sophocles 54)
In this announcement, the chorus alludes to Oedipus and his hubris, or his arrogant belief that he could evade the will of the Gods. The imagery of the ascension and subsequent descension in this passage details how hubris can only last for so long: after reaching its peak, the arrogant figure faces harsh consequences. By claiming that this descent from arrogance cannot be stopped even by skillful feet, the chorus once again conjures the imagery of Oedipus’ disability. Evidently, through these narrations, the chorus demonstrates how Oedipus’ disability is a material metaphor, according to Mitchell and Snyder’s concept, for his lack of free will. He cannot flee from his fate, and it is his physical, tangible impairment that the narration relies upon to exhibit this metaphorical meaning.
Finally, Oedipus’ self-inflicted blindness near the end of the play characterizes a literalization of his blindness throughout the story. When Tiresias, a blind seer, is summoned by Oedipus to reveal the name of the Laius’ killer, Tiresias tells Oedipus that he is a shortsighted fool (Sophocles 22). Tiresias criticizes Oedipus for belittling his blindness when Oedipus himself has eyes but is unable to see his true, evil state (Sophocles 27). In this scene, Tiresias calls attention to the metaphorical blindness of Oedipus—he is ignorant to the fact that he himself is the pollution in the town. Oedipus believes that he can evade the will of the Gods, but his hubris leads to his downfall. Therefore, when Oedipus finally discovers the truth, he declares “Oh light—the last I’ll ever see” (Sophocles 74) before stabbing himself in the eyes and, consequently, blinding himself. The figurative blindness of Oedipus is materialized by Oedipus’ literal blinding at the end of the story. His blinding can be read as a punishment for his hubris, thus becoming a material metaphor for both his ignorance and arrogance throughout the play. Just like the treatment of disabilities as a prosthetic for the narrative, the metaphorical employment of disabilities is also problematic as it ignores the daily, lived realities of disabled bodies. In fact, Mitchell and Snyder contend that the true problem with the representation of disabilities is that impairments are perpetually interpreted as a signifier of something beyond the disability itself (212). In other words, disabilities are not allowed to exist simply as a ubiquitous human condition and experience; literature demands the interpretation of disabilities, beyond the tangible, as a condition that requires a metaphorical meaning.
Ultimately, the narrative arc of Oedipus Rex mirrors that of Mitchell and Snyder’s schematic of a common plot, as Oedipus is exiled at the end of the story. According to Mitchell and Snyder, “a narrative issues to resolve or correct…a deviance marked as improper to a social context” (209). As a result, most narratives conclude by rehabilitating or fixing the deviance in some manner. One such tactic involves “the extermination of the deviant as a purification of the social body” (Mitchell and Snyder 209). Following the end of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus is exiled from Thebes. His exile serves as the extermination of his polluting body in order to end the plague’s reign of terror on the city. Thus, Oedipus’ deviance, manifested in his disability, is exterminated in order to purify the social body of Thebes. In sum, the ending of Oedipus Rex also follows the concept of narrative prosthesis in its conclusion, as the disabled body is removed from society.
Overall, Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex, provides a clear representation of the two major concepts—narrative prosthesis and the materiality of metaphor—in Mitchell and Snyder’s essay. In sum, Oedipus’ disabilities—both his lame feet and his blindness—are exploited by the text as a crutch that enables the story to function in its required way and as an opportunistic metaphorical signifier. As Mitchell and Snyder contend, this representation of disabilities in literature is a problematic portrayal as the texts “rarely take up disability as an experience of social or political dimensions'” (205). Disabilities become a prosthetic and a symbolic figure for narratives but, in doing so, the actual lived experience of disabilities is ignored. While Mitchell and Snyder do not explicitly state a solution to this problematic portrayal of disabled bodies, they seem to suggest that one important step in making progress towards a less problematic representation is to reject the interpretation of disabilities. Both authors and readers need to resist having disabled bodies stand as symbolic figures; instead, disability should be allowed to stand on its own as simply a human experience, one that deserves proper representation.
Works Cited
Folkerth, Wes. “Grimms and Oedipus.” ENGL 297, 19 Jan. 2022, McGill University. Lecture.
Mitchell, David, and Sharon Snyder. “Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor.”
The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2006, pp. 205-16.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Translated by David Mulroy, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
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