Oedipus Rex

Oedipus blinds himself, because what he has metaphorically seen (i.e. realized) leaves him unable to face his family or his parents in the afterlife). The Chorus, meanwhile, wishes it had never seen Oedipus. Not only has he polluted his own sight and his own body by marrying his mother and killing his father, he is a pollutant of others' sights by his very existence. When Oedipus enters, blinded, the Chorus tells him he has sprung to a terrible place “whereof men’s ears / may not hear, nor their eyes behold it” (1313-4). Oedipus has become the very blight he wishes to remove from Thebes, a monster more terrible than the Sphinx that must be cast out in order to save the kingdom.