The Mystery of Walking

Oedipus becomes tyrant of Thebes because he answers the riddle of the Sphinx. The riddle is: What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? Oedipus defeats the Sphinx by guessing the answer correctly: humans. As babies, they crawl on hands and feet. If all goes well, they learn to stand up and walk on two feet as adults. And in old age, as their balance falters, they use a stick as their third foot. In interpreting the "meaning" of the riddle, it is easy to overlook the obvious. The riddle of the Sphinx points to the simple but profound mystery of walking. The Sphinx makes us see the strangeness of walking. Walking is not a constant feature of our lives: we learn to walk with difficulty, if at all, as children, and we slowly unlearn that ability if we live long enough. Yet when one walks with relative ease, it's easy to take walking for granted. We forget that it is a quite extraordinary accomplishment, an accomplishment that at any moment—through injury or arthritis or a stroke—we may lose.

If the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx suggests the strangeness of an animal who learns and unlearns how to walk on two feet, there is the further strangeness of the monster who poses the riddle and of the man who answers it. The Sphinx does not walk on two legs. According to Apollonius, the Sphinx was a monster with the face of a woman, the feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird. ¹ This suggests a being both more and less tied to the ground than humans: more, because it walks on four legs; less, because its wings imply that it can fly. A being that cannot walk poses the riddle of walking. Equally strange, the riddle is answered by a man who should never have walked at all. Indeed, Oedipus comes from a family whose names suggest that they were all lame or off-balance in some way. The name of his grandfather, Labdacus, refers to "a lopsided gait, a lack of symmetry between the two sides of his body, a defect in one foot." ² Laius, the name of his father, suggests someone asymmetrical and clumsy, "the left-hander." And the name Oedipus itself means "swollen foot."Oedipus's feet are swollen because he was deliberately maimed at birth. Laius, his father, was told by an oracle that he would be killed by his son. Laius consequently ordered Oedipus to be exposed immediately after his birth, with his feet pierced and nailed to the ground. The riddle of a creature that walks on two legs is thus solved by a man who finds it difficult to walk on two legs. ³

Yet perhaps it is precisely because of this difficulty that Oedipus is the appropriate person to solve the riddle. For him, walking does not come naturally. It remains a problem. Oedipus, not having perfect balance, stages the strangeness and difficulty of the balancing act that walking presupposes. For him, walking is haunted by loss of balance, by slips, falls, lameness, the stiffening of joints. In fact, the riddle of the Sphinx simplifies the difficulty of walking. When children learn to walk, they do not go from four legs to two legs but from four legs to three legs. The third leg often takes the form of a hand. Either the child uses his or her hands for balance or an adult gives the child a hand. Either way, it's as if a third leg has been added. One can perhaps imagine this most clearly if one thinks of an older child learning first to ride a tricycle and then, disposing of the third wheel, trying to balance on only two wheels. Walking, we are like bicyclists. We have absorbed into our own...