Aiding the victim, Oidipous concludes, he will benefit himself. He is modestly downplaying his willingness to make personal sacrifices to serve Thebes. Yet here he couldn’t be farther from the truth, for where he somewhat disingenuously protests that in pursuing Laios’s killer he is helping more himself than the city, the audience knows that if he will indeed save the city, he can do so only by making his own awful deeds known to all, including himself, thereby inflicting great pain upon himself. So, his misstatement of the truth as he perceives it proves not only to reverse the relative positions of “more” and “less” but also to greatly underestimate the degree of difference: the city will be greatly lifted when he is plunged into the deepest misery. He is right, however, that his professed commitment to the city will indeed come to realization, because he will with his own hand avenge the murder of his own father. He will act as he has spoken, but neither his word nor his deed will prove to mean what he thinks they will. This will make the audience uneasy, for it sees a man speaking and acting with vigor, clarity, commitment, and integrity, while it knows that he will realize neither his own intentions nor his own meanings, but rather those of the god. It is as though the god were able to work through the man’s energies and commitments by reversing their direction or polarity. [Md] [Apcmu] [Apamu]