Apostrophizing the light, Oidipous expresses the wish that he might never again look upon it. This suggests that he prefers henceforth to see by the dim, shady light of the underworld. He may have reached a point of certainty sufficient to execute one of the sentencing options stipulated by the god for Laios’ killer: death (l. 100). This is not, however, how Homer’s version of the story ends; he remains among his Thebans, ruling them in pain (Odyssey 11.275). Nor is this how Aeschylus’s version portrays his end, for there he blinds himself (Seven, l. 787). If Oidipous is contemplating blinding rather than death, however, he would not be acting in accordance with the god’s pronouncement but his own. Continuing to act according to his own lights (or lack thereof) he would persist in disregarding the god. This supports the audience’s supposition that he has not yet begun to see nearly clearly enough. For this limitation, which arises from his unrelenting insistence on preserving his independence from the god, the audience may pity him, for while it admires his faith in his own capacities for reason and self-determination, when this allows him to ignore the implications of an obvious, focused, and very personal demonstration of divine powers, it reveals the weakness of those capacities and the irrationality of that faith. [Apa] [Md] [Mpei] [Mpea]