Oedipus the Meek

"Am I not evil? Am I not utterly unclean
Now I must be banished, and when I go
I may not see my family, nor set my foot
Into my country...
...Do not, do not You sovereign holy Gods
Let me see this day; But let me vanish from the mortal world
Before a stain like this pollutes my life!"

(Oedipus the King, Sophocles, Wordsworth Editions)

This is Oedipus the King speaking or rather letting the words drop from his lips at what can best be called a moment of threshold. This is before Jocasta's messenger confirms his heritage and thus, his guilt, and after Tiresias has uttered his dark prophecy. I don't want to talk about Oedipus as the big figure that he is in both literature and critical theory, but rather as Oedipus, the man, very much in the space between what is fate and what is past. It is Oedipus's prayer that interests me the most--his desire to disappear from the world before his history, his footprint, is stained with the sins of incest and patricide.
We're in a moment then, that seems to not want to recognize the possibility of redemption and forgiveness, but also is unable to conceive of the existence of a sinner. In other words, there is no option for Oedipus, in the case of his sin being confirmed, but to disappear and somehow also erase the memory of his actions on earth. Once again, this is a moment of pre-Heaven and Hell, and pre-redemption days--- but is this also a moment of pre-forgiveness? Oedipus does not pray to the gods for this very wonderful thing, but rather prays for a turn in his fate that would save him from the fate that seems so inevitable at this moment. So in a sense, Oedipus is at a point where death and its permanence are the only escape. As we know, this death does not come for a while and instead, Oedipus wanders around the countryside for sometime, blinded and helpless.
He gets neither the change in the fate he prays for, nor the forgiveness from among those his unconscious sin affected-- I would say that makes him the most damned of all characters I've encountered. I'm still curious though, why Oedipus doesn't pray for forgiveness-- it is undoubtedly a pre-Christian attribute, and is often (and rightly) addressed to the offended in pre-Christian narrative. Is there something inadequate about it? Is there something that forgiveness can't do?
I think there is-- and I think that's reversal. Orpheus asked for a reweaving, and Oedipus asks the same thing. Neither asks for the nightmare to be ended, for things to resume as if darkness had never descended upon them. Why is reversal not a possibility in the desperate minds of these two figures? Why cannot the move forward be one that takes in its arms what is past and reconciles it with what is to come? Is there something inherently wrong with us as human beings that makes the element of forgiveness into one that necessarily must be futuristic and thus incomplete and inadequate. Forgiveness, the way we do it, does not carry the past forward cleaned of its wounds. It inherently assumes that repentance on the part of the sinner is an acceptance and a healing on the part of the person sinned against. Yes, the person. We sin against a divine law, but more intimately, we sin against each other. And that is where forgiveness falls short.