Oedipus Rex Fate Vs Free Will

Have you ever thought that some outside force is controlling your life? That no matter what you do, your future is not up to you? This is what happens in the play, Oedipus Rex. Oedipus tries to run away from his destiny, but everything he does seems to spiral him toward the direction he didn’t want to go. He was told how his future was going to play out. Feeling disgusted, Oedipus tried to escape his fate. At the end of the play, he committed the crimes he was told he would. It feels like an outside source was influencing his decisions and the decisions of those around him. This outside source seems to be manipulating all the situations around Oedipus and brought him closer toward his fate. When the prophecy became fully developed, Oedipus

In the play, an oracle tells Oedipus that he is destined to murder his father and marry his mother. Oedipus states, “Apollo told me once, it’s my fate, I must make love with own mother, shed my own father’s blood with my own hands” (Sophocles 41). At this moment of the play Oedipus is talking about his life before he came to Thebes. This is the part when everything starts to unravel, and it becomes clear that fate is unavoidable. After going to the oracle, he runs away from Corinth, and heads to Thebes to start a new life. On his, way, he runs into a group of travelers and they shove him off the road. This angers Oedipus, and he kills them all. Oedipus makes it to Thebes, where he answers the sphinx’s riddle and frees the city. This leads him to marrying the queen, Jocasta, and becoming the king. Later, it was discovered that Oedipus killed the old King, Laius, on his way to Thebes, and Laius was his father. This means the queen is his mother and the prophecy were fulfilled. This is one example of how nobody can avoid their fate. Oedipus thought he prevented himself from killing his father and murdering his mother. In ancient Greece, prophecies were said to be created by the gods. The prophecy Oedipus was told caused him to go to Thebes. If he didn’t then he wouldn’t have run in to the travelers, they wouldn’t have pushed him, and he wouldn’t have killed his father. He wouldn’t have made it to Thebes and save the

Whatever the god needs and seeks he’ll bring to light himself” (Sophocles 38). Jocasta is talking about how god will be the one to find out who murdered Laius. She is saying that the truth is in god’s hands, like the way he holds their lives in his hands. When Laius and Jocasta decided to murder their son after they found out what that child would be capable of. They left him to die, but he was found and taken in by the King and Queen of Corinth. They found out the fate of their child, because of an oracle, created by the gods. Since he was taken in by somebody else, he didn’t know who his true parents were. It is this lack of understanding that causes him to kill his father and marry his mother, because he didn’t know who they