Oedipus Fate Vs Free Will Research Paper

Fate vs. Free Will

Sophocles uses the play Oedipus the King to show his own ideas of fate and how the universe works. These ideas are shown through the life of the main character Oedipus. In Oedipus the King Oedipus spends much of his life trying to avoid the fate that he was given. When he visits an Oracle he is told that he will kill his father and marry his mother. To escape this horrible fate he leaves the city of Corinth where he grew up and heads to Thebes. Unbeknownst to Oedipus his real mother and father (the King and Queen) live in Thebes so by going there he is just speeding up the prophecy. On his way to the new city he unknowingly kills his father king Laius in a fit of road rage. The city of Thebes is having a problem with a Sphinx that is flying around and eating people until they can solve a riddle. Oedipus manages to

solve the riddle and as a reward is offered a spot as the new king, and his own mother's hand in marriage. In the end Oedipus is able to put all the puzzle pieces together and realises that he killed his own father and married his mother. In a fit of despair he gouges out his own eyes because he no longer wants to see after all the terrible things he has done.
The story of Oedipus the King was Sophocles’s way of showing his view on fate; that it can not be avoided, and will always catch up to you in the end.

This can be seen clearly by how no matter what Oedipus, King Laius, and Queen Jocasta do they only end up making things worse or delaying the inevitable. King Laius and Queen Jocasta’s attempt to kill Oedipus as a baby is a perfect example of Sophocles’s views. In Sophocles’s eyes the very moment that they decide to disregard the prophecy and have a child they have sealed their fate. Sophocles view on the universe and fate is a more traditional and old fashioned compared to the way that many people think in modern times. At the time that Sophocles’s plays were written the worship of the Greek Gods was common. In this time most people believed in oracles and prophets who were “chosen” by the gods and could see into the future. Sophocles’s view on fate was very likely influenced by these beliefs. Someone from that time period would have drastically different views on fate because at their time everyone believed in higher powers that control your life and that influence all your

choices.
My view of fate could not be any more different than Sophocles’s. I personally believe that we always have the power to change our lives if we want to. Sophocles believed that your fate was predetermined and could not be changed, while I do not even believe in the concept of fate. To me, everyone has the ability and the power to make changes in their life as long as they are willing to put in the work. The main reason that I do not believe in fate is because at any time you could get up and leave what you are doing in that moment and start a new life. No one is deciding that for you, you made the decision and you followed up on it. At any given time someone can decide to start working out, to quit their job, or to become a vegetarian without fate telling them they have to do that. I think that another reason I do not believe in fate is because of all the advancements in science that we have today.
In the end it mostly comes down to science and religion. I believe that in ancient Greece it was common to blame a disaster or tragedy on fate because at the time many people were unable to come up with more realistic explanations on why that situation occurred and they were influenced by what their rulers and churches said. In modern times we are able to come up with proven scientific reasons for things like floods or heart attacks so we no longer need to blame them on fate.