How Does Oedipus Will Affect Your Future

In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Tiresias is demanded by Oedipus to speak of the source of which Teiresias has received his predictions, Teiresias’s response is, “[y]ou weave your own doom”(Sophocles, 1.162). This idea of “weaving your own doom” is found throughout Oedipus Rex mainly as a theme of characters past actions can and will affect their future, their future being the doom the face. This not only is found with Oedipus but other characters, it is a common event that takes place throughout.

Firstly, what is doom? A simple definition would be, “Final fate, destruction, ruin, death.”(OED). The main words that jump out in that definition would be destruction and death, which death is a reoccurring event in the play. As well as the

New learning of the prophecy Oedipus is on the way out of Corinth, he comes across the crossroads where Oedipus explains he murdered a group of men after being ran off the road and acting in a rage,“I killed him. I killed them all.”(Sophocles, 2.289-90). Oedipus now knowing of the prophecy realizes he is the culprit of King Laius’s murder. Before Oedipus knew of this information he declared that the murderer would be exiled and banished from the kingdom, which means Oedipus himself shall be banished. Oedipus realizes that the men he killed back at the crossroads long ago was indeed his own father and that he has also slept with Iokaste the mother of Oedipus. All of this newly learned information leads Oedipus to a stage of craziness which leads to self mutilation using the brooches of his recently hung mother: “For the King ripped from her gown the golden brooches That were her ornament, and raised them, and plunged them down Straight into his own eyeballs, crying, ‘No more,”(Sophocles, Exodus.43-45)

Oedipus is the best example in the play of how his actions in the past catch up to him in the future, as well all of the things going wrong in Oedipus’s future lead to his own