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Choice In Oedipus The King

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Who on earth could have been born of hate from heaven? (Sophocles, 29) Although not by choice, Oedipus commits the most horrific acts of killing his father and marrying his mother. The tragic events that follow in his life, seem to be a punishment, not from the gods but from his own wrongdoings. His unreliable decisions guide him to such a miserable ending. Oedipus The King, by Sophocles, is a play about a king named, Oedipus, a good man, who on many occasions tried to evade the prophecies of the gods, unfortunately for him, these prophecies were not just rumors like his mother stated in many parts of the play. Oedipus the king is an exciting story full of mysteries and ironies. Furthermore, Oedipus’ obsessions in searching for the killer of …show more content…

“Upon the murderer I invoke this curse- whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many- may he wear out his life in misery or doom! If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth, I pray that I myself may feel my curse.” (pg. 42) Although it is widely claim that destiny is by choice, there is a huge number of people who believed that it is by faith. In the story of Oedipus the King by Sophocles, the play illustrates how Oedipus had control of his own free will, because of the choices he made. He discusses throughout the play about his past and what happens to him by making his choices in the story. Oedipus’ unyielding desire to uncover the truth about Laius’ murder and the mystery surrounding his own birth, led him to the tragic realization of his horrific deeds. On the other hand, God will never take the life away from any human being since he was the one who created everything. But you can because it is your free will to decided the roads of your life. You are responsible for making your own decisions. One example of freewill in oedipus life is in the beginning when there is a plague in Thebes that can only be stopped by finding King Laius’ killer. Oedipus tells Creon that he curses the killer of Laius to live in exile, “Now my curse on the murderer, Whoever he is a lone man unknown in his crime or one among many, let that man drag out his life in agony, step by painful step” (Sophocles, 35). This quote shows free will because Oedipus tells Creon that whoever is the killer of Laius, he is going to send him to exile in the mountains. Instead, he could have said he would kill the killer of Laius or send him to prison. Oedipus uses free will to make his own decisions. He told Creon that the killer of Laius was to live in exile. He refused to stop looking for the truth

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Oedipus was cursed when he was a baby and found out his destiny when the god Apollo showed him a vision saying “You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see- you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!” (Sophocles 873-875) However, Oedipus did not know that the ones who found him and raised him as his son were not his parents. After the prophecy, Oedipus decided to run away to try to change his fate even though it was already set to kill his father and sleep with his mother, unfortunately he couldn’t do anything about it. “Its mine alone, my destiny-I am Oedipus!”

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After Oedipus realizes that he fulfilled his fate of killing his father and marrying his mother, Oedipus declares,”I have been saved for something great and terrible, something strange. Well let destiny come and take me on its way”(323). Then Oedipus gouges out his own eyes so that he cannot look upon his parents in the underworld, his children, or the city he once ruled. He then asks Creon to return him to the place he should have died as a young child, the mountain. The statement reveals that Oedipus fulfilled his fate and that Oedipus truly believes destiny set him on the path of destruction.

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The prophet, Teiresias, reveals Oedipus’s curse of murdering his father and sleeping with his mother. “To Delphi, and Apollo sent me back / Baulked of the knowledge that I came to seek. / But other grievous things he prophesied, / Woes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire; / To wit I should defile my mother’s bed / And raise up seed too loathsome to behold, / And slay the father from whose loins I sprang” (Oedipus, 791-797). This is Oedipus’s true reality, but his acerbic attitude denies the possibility of its legitimacy.

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Although he was ashamed of the life he had been living, he realized that the mistakes were his own, and no one can bear the weight but him. He even said it himself “No one but me can bear this weight.” The grave consequences which Oedipus suffered in the end consisted of the loss of his mother/ wife by suicide, as well as his grief becoming a threat to himself, as he stabbed his own eyes out, blinding him permanently. After suffering dreadful pain from these actions in grief, Oedipus went on to face the other consequences given by the gods and Creon. He cursed himself many times in the book saying that whoever killed Laius should be banished or killed, and he would even go on to be cursed by his wrongful actions of incest.

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A messenger comes with the news that Oedipus’ father has died. This makes Oedipus even more confident that the prophecies about him aren’t true. Although these weren’t his true parents, he still does not believe in the truth of the prophecies. Iocaste reassures her husband, “Why should anyone in this world be afraid, since fate rules us and nothing can be foreseen? A man should live only for the present day” (51).

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Fate versus free will is a common theme employed throughout the stories of Oedipus the King and Antigone. Both stories are written with that theme in mind and begin to illustrate a common question. Are Oedipus and Antigone to blame for their outcomes? In Antigone, Antigone directly chose to bury her brother, but outside influences may have also caused her outcome. Oedipus decided to seek the truth, but the gods may have also caused his outcome to arrive.

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Niya Kebreab King Oedipus: Moral Ambiguity In the play King Oedipus, Sophocles depicts Oedipus’ inevitable downfall, which represents man’s struggle between free will and fate. In an attempt to use the audience’s knowledge to his advantage, Sophocles opens the play seventeen years after Oedipus murders his father, Laius and marries his mother, Jocasta. The sequence in which the story unravels reveals the strong psychological focus towards Oedipus’ character. In search of his identity, Oedipus’ enigmatic quality and moral ambiguity compels readers to question whether his ignorance renders him morally blameless.

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  His agency is based on his drive for knowledge.   Throughout the play, Oedipus pushes many people for information regarding his beginnings. Each one of those characters in some way or form denied giving him a clear answer. As he draws close to an answer, another character tries to stop his journey.  Oedipus continues to keep moving forward even though others tried to get him to stop.

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The ending of Oedipus conveys the message that one cannot escape his fate and the free will he exhibits will in the end be worthless because everyone has an assigned fate. Oedipus himself is a great example of this when he saw the oracle it “flashed before my eyes a future great with pain, terror, disaster”(Sophocles, 870). This was when Oedipus first found out about his fated future and upon hearing that he was deeply saddened so he tried to escape his fate which only lead him to fulfill it. At the end after he realizes that the oracle was right,, Oedipus says, “I stand revealed at last -- cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands!” (Sophocles, 1310), this was the moment that Oedipus realized that all of his precautions of leaving Corinth to escape his fate just led him right to it.

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When one considers that Oedipus’ actions involving his actual parents were unwitting it is easy to see that he is in fact innocent of a true crime and in classical scholar E. R. Dodds’ essay “On Misunderstanding the ‘Oedipus Rex’” he concludes that Oedipus is fundamentally innocent and states “I hope I have now disposed of the moralizing interpretation, which has been rightly abandoned by the great majority of contemporary scholars. To mention only recent works in English, the books of Whitman, Waldock, Letters, Ehrenberg, Knox, and Kirkwood, however much they differ on other points, all agree about the essential moral innocence of Oedipus.” and while details of these other scholars would take too long to explain in a simple essay it is agreeable that the thought of Oedipus’ misfortune being in punishment for unwittingly fulfilling his prophecy is false. However, the consideration that his misfortune is a result of his indifference is indeed a viable explanation and allows for the concept of Oedipus’ life being rectified if only he had listened to his

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First, he was blind to the truth about his own life. Oedipus had no idea that his real parents were Laius and Jocasta, he was so blind that he got mad at anyone that would even suggest an idea such as that. As the story went on though, Oedipus could no longer run from the truth; he was forced to open his eyes to the reality and truth of his life. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother; he is the brother to his own kids and the son of his own mother. Oedipus was the one that was causing all of the downfall and bad times in Thebes.

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Introduction The story of Oedipus the king is gloomy, yet captivating. Going from a child bond around the feet and abandon by the mountainside, to marrying his mother, his story is intriguing. In search of the truth about the prophecy and putting an end to a plague Oedipus, search for king Laius’s killer, did somethings inadvertently, making him a tragic hero. His search for truth in the death of Laius the king, as well as his birth led to the ultimate destruction and downfall of his life.

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