Fear of guilt

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        Everyone is afraid of something. It might be a fear of spiders, heights, water, social interaction, or even failure, but one common reaction that results from the fear of something is to stay as far away as possible from that horrifying “thing”. This ensures that we cannot be harmed by that “thing” we deemed dangerous. However, in the case of Oedipus Rex and The Trial by Franz Kafka, that natural response to fear led the protagonists to the thing that they are most afraid of: Guilt.

As we debate the influence of fate on Oedipus’s tragic end, one question was always bugging me. Why did Oedipus choose to keep looking for the truth despite all the warnings and confirmations that people he used to trust gave him? Was it because he is arrogant and considers himself better than others? Maybe. But I think the better answer here is that his fear of being guilty caused him to go on this endless hunt for the truth.

Similarly, in The Trial, the main character, K, is informed one morning that he is guilty for committing an unknown crime. He’s constantly denying his crime and acting confident that he is innocent. The opening sentence of the book literally says “he knew he had done nothing wrong.” However, he is always trying to find a way to discover the whole truth in order to clear his name of this crime.

Both of these characters began to show their fear of being guilty in an almost identical way. K, who worked in a bank, was suddenly informed of his unknown crime. Before that day, he had no idea that he did anything wrong. Similarly, with Oedipus, he was suddenly warned by Tiresia that “[Oedipus] is the curse, the corruption of the land!” Then, these two characters had the same reaction which is to immediately deny it. K went to the courtroom and delivered a powerful speech to the people in court even though it had no effect on the final result of his trial, and Oedipus immediately called Tiresia “stone-blind and stone-deaf” and tried to push his crime onto Creon. Following this initial denial of guilt, the fear of being guilty will eventually lead to the tragic end of both characters.

This fear caused Oedipus to even doubt his wife. Jocasta told Oedipus that it was a group of thieves that attacked king Laius. However, because of the prophecy, Oedipus knew that there was a small chance that he has committed the crime. To ensure that he knows the truth, he wanted to dig out everything that he can find. This way he can finally say proudly that he is completely innocent of this crime and achieve his goal of staying as far away from guilt as possible. In K’s case, because of the unknown nature of his crime, he does not know what caused his crime. So even though he is pretty confident that he is innocent, he cannot confirm it 100%. After all, he was not given any details about anything. So he still desperately looked for lawyers and connections with higher-ups in the court to discover the truth in an attempt to find a way to clear his name. But these actions ultimately led to their tragic ends.


In conclusion, what both characters did in the stories had the opposite effect on them: it brought them closer and closer to being guilty. None of their struggles to stay innocent worked as they intended. They doubted their own innocence which led them into an endless cycle of investigation and painful discoveries. None of which would have happened if they trusted people they consult and themselves.

So, what can we do to avoid having this fear of guilt? Honestly, I don’t even know. The logical answer would be just to live a life without any dark spots, but is that even possible? In today’s society, even a simple sentence that we say can cause us to end up in jail. Anything that a person says today can be used against them someday because of the easy access of online platforms allowing easy access to personal opinion. Also, would it even be fun to strive to live a life that is perfect? Living life like almost a robot is not how I want to live my life. To live a life without any imperfections is to not live life at all.



Maybe this is the real moral behind the fear of guilt.

 

 


                                                                   No one:

                                                                   Oedipus:

Further Reading on social media evidence:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewarnold/2018/12/30/heres-how-social-media-can-be-used-against-you-in-court/#4d3826926344

Further Reading on the fear of guilt causing OCD:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/guilt-sensitivity-ocd_n_5898b015e4b09bd304bc8d1d

 

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