A key theme in Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus Rex, is the inescapable legacy of unresolved past crimes involving the state; with them came their prophetic curse. The people of Thebes, caught in the mire of these past crimes (perhaps because they purposely overlooked them) suffer. As they struggle to get on with life with its immediate challenges including the riddle of the Sphinx, they find that even when that is solved, they still cannot escape the past. Their former king, Laius, is part of it all. He had been welcomed despite his own past of having abused the hospitality of the King of Pelops. Laius in turn tries to escape the prediction of death by his son by binding that son's feet and ordering him to be left for dead. Oedipus, that son, in trying to avoid his role unknowingly makes his way back to Thebes to fulfill the curse. As the play opens, the citizens have ironically come to Oedipus for the solution. But Thebes will not be cleansed until justice is rendered and retribution for past crimes achieved. Taiwan finds itself in a comparable situation; it struggles with many external threats, a hegemonic neighbor, the troubling economy of a modern world etc. But Taiwan also remains haunted by a failure to face and resolve its inescapable past. The widening corruption case of Lin Yi-shih highlights how that past, periodically buried, regularly resurfaces in the corrupt systems endemic in the state's legacy.
