Finally, after Oedipus threatens him with torture, the shepherd answers that the baby came from the house of Laius. Questioned further, he answers that it was Laius's child, and that Jocasta gave it to him to destroy because of a prophecy that the child would kill his parents.
An oracle had predicted that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother, and as an infant he was abandoned by his birth parents, Laius and Jocasta, the rulers of Thebes, because of this curse. He was taken by a shepherd, and raised by the previously childless king and queen of Corinth, Polybus and Merope.
Jocasta handed the newborn infant over to Laius.
Jocasta or Laius pierced and pinned the infant's ankles together. Laius instructed his chief shepherd, Menoetes (not to be confused with Menoetes, the underworld spirit) a slave who had been born in the palace, to expose the infant on Mount Cithaeron and leave it to die.
Jocasta doesn't know that the prophecy Laius received came true—she believes her son to be dead and her husband to have been murdered by a band of thieves. This seemingly disproves the prophecy that said Laius would die by his son's hand.
Oedipus asks the elders if anyone knew the shepherd from the household of Laius. They say it is the very servant that has been sent for. Meanwhile Jocasta has put all the bits of evidence into place, and is terrified by the result — that Oedipus is her own son.
Answer and Explanation:
In Oedipus the King, Jocasta kills herself because she is ashamed for having become intimate with her son, Oedipus. Earlier in the play, she becomes aware of a prophecy that predicts she will marry her own child.
Finally, after Oedipus threatens him with torture, the shepherd answers that the baby came from the house of Laius. Questioned further, he answers that it was Laius's child, and that Jocasta gave it to him to destroy because of a prophecy that the child would kill his parents.
Because an oracle had predicted when Oedipus was a baby that this would happen, his parents had ordered him killed. The servant entrusted with this errand gave him to an adoptive family instead, so Oedipus grew up not knowing anything about his birth family. Oedipus loves Jocasta before he knows she's his mother.
Jocasta now realizes that Oedipus is the baby she and Laius abandoned, and that the prophecy has come true. She begs Oedipus to stop his inquiry, but he refuses, and she runs into the palace screaming.
Jocasta loved her son to the core and did everything to protect him including taking his side against Creon. When he went toe-to-toe with Creon over the murder of King Laius, Creon tried to reason with him but her son wanted him dead.
It is when a mother has an abnormally close or incestuous attachment to her son. It is named after Jocasta the mother and wife of Oedipus in Greek mythology.
He finally hurled himself at the bedroom door and burst through it, where he saw Jocasta hanging from a noose. Seeing this, Oedipus sobbed and embraced Jocasta.
Her lack of anger towards Oedipus for his patricide makes it clear that she holds herself and not him responsible for the tragic events in his life. This feeling of guilt culminates in Jocasta's suicide, for she has no-one left to blame but herself.
Jocasta is on her third husband by the start of Outlander Season 4. She has one daughter from each of her marriage, although only one is living with her in the Colonies. It turns out her elder daughters, Clementina and Seonag, and their families died during the aftermath of Culloden.
Jocasta, her husband and youngest daughter, Morna, fled to the coast after she could not convince her husband to go and help her two older children and their families. On the way to the coast, they were stopped by the English and during the attack Hector accidentally shot Morna; Jocasta never forgave him for her death.
She tells Oedipus that prophecies do not come true, and she uses the fact that an oracle incorrectly prophesied that Laius would be killed by his own son as evidence. Jocasta's mistake is similar to Oedipus's in the previous section: she confuses conclusions and evidence.
Oedipus told the messenger that he could not go back while his mother was alive. Surprise overwhelmed Oedipus, for the messenger told him that she was not his mother. He explained that he was given the baby many years ago by a Theban shepherd. Jocasta then realized that Oedipus was her son.
At the end of the play, after the truth finally comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, proceeds to gouge out his own eyes in despair.
Jocasta, finally realizing Oedipus' true identity, entreats him to abandon his search for Laius' murderer. Oedipus misunderstands the motivation of her pleas, thinking that she was ashamed of him because he might have been the son of a slave. She then goes into the palace where she hangs herself.
Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud chose the term Oedipus complex to designate a son's feeling of love toward his mother and of jealousy and hate toward his father, although those were not emotions that motivated Oedipus's actions or determined his character in any ancient version of the story.
When Oedipus grew to manhood, a prophet warned him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Not knowing that he had been adopted, and that his real parents were Jocasta and Laius, Oedipus left the country to avoid committing such crimes.
Thinking that Polybus and his wife were his parents, Oedipus left home to avoid this destiny and wound up in Thebes—where he ironically fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta, not realizing they were his true parents.
Jocasta realized the truth because she was an active participant. When the messenger reveals that Oedipus was not the son of Polybus and Merope, and that he himself had taken the baby from the shepherd, who found him in the mountains, with his ankles pierced......
When does Jocasta realize the truth and how does she react? She realizes the truth when the messenger comes and she tells Oedipus to give up looking for the answers. Why is there a plague in the beginning of the play? Laius' killer is still in Thebes.
Jocasta acts as a hero, but is also a character in a tragedy, and in tragedies heroes do not triumph. She is a tragic hero because she fits the definition of a person doomed by fate, whose misfortune is brought about by error or ignorance, not by vice or depravity.