Teiresias

The first time I heard the name “Teiresias” was not in an English novel but I first knew about Teiresias when I read a Malay Novel entitled “Awang Vampiro”. In that novel, Teiresias was pictured as an exiled leader of an evil clan that if returned into the earth realm, will unleash pure evil and destroy mankind in order to create a living place for their kind. All the description about Teiresias in that novel really influenced me when I read the play “Oedipus Rex”. This is mainly because the schemata I had in my mind was far different from what I was reading at the moment.
In Oedipus Rex, Teiresias was not an evil person, but he can be acknowledged as a strong character in the play. Although he has all the weaknesses, he did have his own gift – he was given the gift of forseeing the future. He was also the only person in history that had lived the life of a man and a woman. Thus, in my opinion, Teiresias has the experience that has not been ever experienced by any human beings. He was a man with nothing in his life, he was even blind and old, but what he has inside him was the most valuable thing- The experience that nobody else ever had.