What Are The Similarities Between Minority Report And Oedipus The King

The movie Minority Report and the book Oedipus the King both explore similar themes, and imagery. Consistently throughout both features, the idea of presumed murder, the imagery of sight, and the question of predetermined fate shape each storyline and provoke similarities between them.

Can we be held responsible for a crime we have yet to commit? Oedipus and Minority Report both explore this question. In the beginning of Minority Report, John claims that “[t]here hasn't been a murder in 6 years” and that “[t]here's nothing wrong with the system, it is perfect”. However, the movie continues on to question whether this is true or not. The movie raises the ethical debate of whether it is morally right to punish people for their uncommitted crimes. In Oedipus, Oedipus is punished as a baby for a crime he was destined to commit later in life. He was meant to be killed because it was his fate to be an adulterer/murderer. In the end, we learn that he killed his father because he did not know who he was, and didn’t know the woman he married was his mother. This justifies the

fact that maybe you shouldn’t punish a non-murderer for murder because he might just turn out to be one.
In both pieces, the symbol of vision or eyes is explored, more specifically the removal of eyes.

In Minority report, your eyes represent your identity which is why John needs to have them removed to hide from the system, which he does to expose the truth, because “in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark”. In Oedipus, eyes represent knowledge, Oedipus is glorified for his clear-sightedness, but later learns he has been blind to the truth for his whole life. He learns that he did end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Even though he didn’t do this intentionally he is horrified of himself and gouges his eyes out because he realized they made him blind to the sin around him. Both men were hypothetically “blind” to the system or world they were in an either had to lose their eyes to expose the truth, or the truth came out and had to get rid of their eyes as an act of

eradication.
Another common theme is the idea of predetermined fate. Both characters fulfilled a prophecy even though they believed they were making their own choices and wouldn’t do exactly that. In the end, all the events in both prophecies came true. However, by them deciding to use their own free will in order to not live the prophecy, ultimately resulted in the fate actually occurring. This begs the worldview question of do we get to choose our paths or are we merely acting out the paths set out for us. In Minority Report, John believes that if “you know your own future,... you can change it if you want to”, whereas, with Oedipus, he knew his future but couldn’t change it because of the lies surrounding him.
In conclusion, both Oedipus the King, and Minority Report use symbolic storylines to ask worldview questions like Can we be punished for crimes we have yet to commit, and who determines our fate?