Oedipus Rex: A Victim of Fate At one time, Oedipus, the main character in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, was the most powerful, wealthiest, and respected man in Thebes, that is until fate caught up with him. Fate is defined as “the development of events beyond a person's control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power.” (Google Dictionary) As the definition states, fate is beyond a person’s control, therefore, Oedipus’s fate was bound to come back to hurt him at some point. His devastating downfall was ultimately caused by fate. Oedipus’s fate was doomed from the very start, long before he was even born. The following excerpt provided by “The Oedipus Myth” gives readers a brief background of an incident that occurred long before Oedipus was around. “A man named Cadmus founded Thebes, a city-state in Greece. Unfortunately, later on, he angered the god Apollo by killing his favorite snake. As punishment, Apollo decreed that all of …show more content…
After Oedipus later discovers his fate from the oracle, he runs away, hoping to make sure those predictions would never come true. At this time, however, Oedipus still believes that Merope and Polybus are his real parents. “... I went to the shrine at Delphi. The god dismissed my question without reply; He spoke of other things. Some were clear, full of wretchedness, dreadful, unbearable: As, that I should lie with my own mother… and that I should be my father’s murderer. I heard all this, and fled… And I came to this country where, so you say, King Laïos was killed.” (Sophocles 42-43) As Oedipus tries to escape his fate by running away from his “parents,” he only turns the predictions from the oracle into reality. Though, at the time, Oedipus has no idea that the predictions are true, and therefore, is metaphorically blind to the truth for much of his life. Just as he thinks he is free of his fate, Oedipus runs right into