Oedipus Rex Fate Vs Free Will Essay

Fate vs. Free Will in Oedipus Rex Sophocles’ play “Oedipus Rex” alludes to the theme of fate vs. free will throughout the story. Merriam Webster Dictionary define fate as “the will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do.” This pose opposition to free will, defined as “freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention”. Oedipus in this play could have changed his fate, by exercising his free will and taking different actions. At that time where this play was written, “Fate was the will of the gods, a reality that could not be opposed, ritually revealed by the oracle of Delphi who spoke for Apollo himself” (Stevens 1). Oedipus is predestined by the oracle to kill his father and marry his mother. When Laius is told that his son Oedipus was going to kill him in the future, he decides to send

One of these men was Laius, his biological parent. Part of the prophecy was already done and he did not even know what he had done. After he got to Thebes, marries an older woman, the queen of Thebes. This woman was Jokasta, who was his biological mother. “The play dramatizes the lonely path of self-discovery, as Oedipus separates his true self from an illusory self-defined by the external status of his kingship, and retraces his existence from powerful ruler to lonely wanderer without parents, city, home” (Bloom 73). Oedipus’ fate was already fulfilled. He exercised his free will, but his actions were not the right ones to avoid and prevent this prophecy. Oedipus could have taken simplest actions that would have prevent his predestined future. If he simply had not killed anyone, or would have not married with someone older than him, then oracle’s predestination would have been prevented