Currently watching this in English Class

Oedipus is some greek myth where the son killed his own father to be with his mother. the Oedipal complex is a stage which males from the ages of 3-5 go through, where they develop an unconscious love for their mother, and an unconscious jealousy for their father. these feelings dissappear completely by the age of 6 or so. the reverse (for girls) occurs at the same age and is called the Electra complex.

maybe your teacher thinks that martin actually loves his mother in a romantic sense and covers these feelings with refusing to trust her, etc. i dont think thats the case though, that's a pretty big assumption to make

i really dont know what your english teacher is talking about, surely they would have given some kind of reason for saying that this movie relates to Oedipus?

I guess, in a far-fetched way it does relate a little

We talked, in my high school psychology class, about Freud's suggested Oedipal complex, like blaming everything on the mother. His mother acted like he was an obsticle in her would-be perfect life, or at least he thought she did, so in a way he believes everyone is lying to him just to get away from him.

That's still a big stretch though.

My assumption is that your English teacher arrived at that conclusion on the basis of that scene in which young Martin touches his mother's face and body while she's asleep.

However, the point of that scene hardly can be to convey anything sexual about Martin's personality. Martin wants to "see" his mother when she's unaware, because he believes she tells lies in her descriptions of the world.

Why he had come to believe that, I don't think the movie showed. But on account of that one scene in which Andy explains Martin that people are not invetarate liers but lie only exceptionally, I presume Martin, acutely dependent on truth, had caught his mother breach the truth once, and she never ever again regained his trust. At least, not until the last scene in the movie, when Martin discovers that in the photographed garden there really was the man with the rake, just like his mother had said. This is where Martin's arc completes: now that he's stopped believing his late mother used to lie constantly, he's finally ready to put some faith in the world, and so he decides to keep his friendship with Andy, despite Andy's being caught in a lie about Celia.

I guess your teacher is right about one thing: Martin's worldview does have quite some dependence on his view of his mother. But her Oedipal theory is a dud.

no i am db

Nobody has mentioned the link to Oedipus and blindness--remember how Oedipus blinds himself? Not that I see much of a connection otherwise...