Lia Vasilis Ms. Tillotson English 2 Hnrs 31 May 2024 Oedipus Rex & Macbeth: Fate or Free Will Was Oedipus a puppet to fate, or did he choose his tragic ending? Did Macbeth willingly choose to spiral into insanity, or was it destined all along? Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex in 429 BC, a drastically different period from Shakespeare's Macbeth in 1606. However, the themes of fate and free will are shockingly similar, even if the authors show them differently. Shakespeare and Sophocles utilize their characters differently, but both get their themes across; Sophocles uses dialogue, but Shakespeare crafted his characters to show fates versus their free will. In addition to characters, they also use their versions of tone to show that the characters, …show more content…
They both die because of the effort to kill Duncan. Readers feel pity for Macbeth for being “tricked” into pursuing a dark path and not the waiting game because who knows what would have happened without this killing. That pity readers feel can be translated as pathos. The authors utilize the tool of pathos to get the reader's sympathy for the characters and their tragic struggles with their fates, making us question if they deserve the lives they received. In Act 3 of Macbeth, readers start to see the psychological torment that he is going through, “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!/Thou knowest that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives" (Shakespeare 3.2.36-37). His mind, “full of scorpions,” vividly shows that he is always paranoid and cannot find peace. This inner struggle can help readers better understand what he is going through and sympathize with him (Shakespeare). Along with the feeling of ill-gotten power that fuels his paranoia of seeing those he killed to get here thinking they are alive. Readers may have difficulty distinguishing what Macbeth chooses and what seems to be punishment, such as his mental