Compare The Iliad And Oedipus The King

Although both The Iliad and Oedipus the King portray humans with very little control of their lives, in The Iliad the gods have some of the control, but are subservient to the power of fate and their biggest role in the story is to be an object of blame. This is contrasted by the view of power in Oedipus the king where the gods are much more involved and help carry out the Fates’ will, despite the human’s wishes, and this difference affects the thematic differences because Homer places more of the blame on humans while Sophocles gives humans less power and therefore less responsibility for their actions.

In the Iliad, the gods do have some control, but not as much as the humans think they do. When he is killing Hektor, Achilleus says,

After Hektor’s death, his mother wails that “death and fate have closed in upon” him (Homer, 22) and his wife calls him “ill-fated” (Homer, 23). They seem to both accept that his death was not as much a matter of his personal strength or the god’s will, but of fate. This mysterious force that controls all is strange because even though it seems so powerful, it is not as often mentioned. The story is filled with praise given to the gods and prayers. Fate seems to be opposite of the gods- rarely acknowledged by humans, but capable of effecting their lives more. It is also unable to be bribed by sacrifices (fate seems to have no interest in cow thighs), it cannot be changed, and it is above the gods. The power of fate over the gods is most clearly portrayed in a glimpse of a counsel with Athena and Zeus. Zeus, the most powerful of all the gods, wishes to rescue Hektor, but Athena stops him by saying, “Do you wish to bring back a man who is mortal, one long since doomed by his destiny, from ill-sounding death to release him?” (Homer, 16). By referring to Hektor’s fate, she stops Zeus. If the king of all the gods can not challenge fate, how could a mortal? Homer’s answer is that nothing can stop fate. While this is almost comforting because in many respects it is better to live under the

About his journey to Corinth, Oedipus remarks, “I the Oedipus who stumbled here without a hint, could snuff her out by human wit, not taking cues from birds” (Sophocles, 23). The birds that he referred to were a common way to tell the future. By ignoring them and trusting his own instincts to leave town and later defeat the monster, he defies the fate that the oracle predicts and tries to take his destiny into his own hands. The futility of this is illustrated in a later quote, where he says, “Oh, I fled from there, I measured out the stars to put all heaven in between the land of Corinth and such a damned destiny. And as I went, I stumbled on the very spot where this king you say has met his end” (Sophocles, 44). Oedipus thinks that his journey from Thebes was defying the prophecy and an act of freewill, but it is actually the journey ends up fulfilling the prophecy. The language about the stars is important, because the stars were a way to predict the future. Even though he is only using them to navigate, he is still dependent on the sky, and symbolically fate. While he is trying to escape his horrible destiny, he is trapped and cannot. This shows a key difference in the worldview of Homer’s characters because Hektor and Achilles seemed very open to letting heaven and the fates determine their will, while Sophocles’ characters are fighting it. This is the result of