Oedipus the King: Actions Speak Louder Than Fate - Essay Example

?Jessica Soliz Sarah Peters English 2332 9 April Actions Speak Louder Than Fate: What is fate? Fate is “an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end. In life, no matter what choices we make our fate will be the way it was always meant to end. In Oedipus the King we learn of Oedipus’ attempt to avoid what the gods have prophesied for him. He will sleep with his mother and kill his father. Any person with good morals would want to divert from these horrid acts at any cost so Oedipus runs away from his family to avoid that anything of the sort will happen. However, in the end we find out that this prophecy came true despite Oedipus’ attempt to steer clear of those results. In Oedipus the King, Sophocles makes it clear fate, choices, and one’s personality all go hand in hand. Before making an in-depth analysis of the story with respect to the thesis stated above, it is customary to make a quick go through the story. Laius, the King of Thebes is warned by Delphic oracle not to marry Jocasta because if he does, the couple would give birth to a baby who would kill Laius and marry Jocasta. Being ignorant towards the advice of the oracle, Laius marries Jocasta. Upon the birth of the child, Oedipus, Laius pierces the child’s ankle and leaves him unattended on a hill to die. A shepherd takes the child and delivers him to King Polybos in Corinth. The Delphic oracle finds Oedipus and tells him that he is destined to assassinate his father and sleep with his mother. Having heard such a dreadful decision of the destiny, Oedipus resolves to run away from his family so that he would be able to make sure that he never commits the sin. On his way to Thebes, he encounters a stranger at a junction of three roads who happens to be Oedipus’s real father, Laius. Oedipus kills Laius, who is a stranger to him and proceeds to Thebes. As he reaches Thebes, he defeats the Sphinx and is rewarded with the position of the King of Thebes. He marries Jocasta in this position as she happens to be the queen. Jocasta somehow comes to know that Laius has been killed by a group of robbers. After a span of sixteen years or more, Thebes catches plague. As per his commitment with the public, Oedipus searches for the killer of Laius and ultimately gets to know that he himself is the person he has been looking for. Having realized the truth, Jocasta hangs herself to death and Oedipus loses his eye sight. The Chorus mourns the sorrowful destiny of King Oedipus. One of the most fundamental themes of this play is fate and the fact that it is beyond human power to escape fate. What is destined to happen, will happen at any cost and there is no way escaping it. This is what has happened with two main characters in the story, i.e. Laius and King Oedipus. By not paying heed to the divine warning made by oracle Delphic against his decision of marrying Jocasta, Laius essentially committed two sins; First, he went against the will of god and married Jocasta. Secondly, the act of leaving the newborn baby to hillside to no one’s discretion put Laius into guilt for the rest of his life. Laius resolved to leave the child alive on the hillside so that there would be at least one per cent chance of his survival (Vellacott 139). To this end, all that happened with Laius seems quite justified and reasonable since he had originally gone against the will of god. What is more important and yet, more difficult to comprehend is the reason for which Oedipus had to go through all the shameful experiences and reach the tragic destination of blindness. Obviously, this had to happen since the oracle had warned Laius regarding the association of the very future with his act of marrying Jocasta at the outset. So Oedipus had to be the very son of Laius who was destined to be murderer and adulterer. But it seems just too unjust for Oedipus to be the victim of Laius’s mistake since he was innocent in whatever he did because that was done unintentionally and not knowingly. However, the author does seem to make sense for punishing Oedipus at one point in the story when Oedipus is rebuked by the Chorus for meaninglessly cursing Teiresias, the oracle and Kreon. Although, he was destined to be his father’s killer and his mother’s sexual partner, yet he would, by no means have ever come to know of this truth. The oracle Teiresias originally was reluctant to talk to Oedipus regarding the murderer of Laius. It was essentially so because Oedipus was innocent and the oracle certainly did not want him to know the truth because of that. However, it was only because of Oedipus’s emphasis and forcefulness that the oracle told Oedipus that he was the murderer. This speaks of the fact that the choices made by people play a fundamental role in shaping the fortune they have. Had King Oedipus not forced the oracle to tell him the truth, Teiresias was least ready or interested in telling him the truth by himself. In reply to King Oedipus’s insistence, Teiresias said, “You are all ignorant. I will not reveal the troubling things inside me, which I can call your grief as well” (Sophocles cited in Personae). Accordingly, King Oedipus could have escaped his dreadful future, but he chose to learn the truth. The author has tried to convince the audience regarding the misfortune of King Oedipus by making Oedipus rebuke the oracle Teiresias and Kreon for no good reason. Having learnt the oracle’s verdict regarding the murderer, Oedipus said to him, “Get out, and may the plague get rid of you! Off with you! Now! Turn your back and go! And don’t come back here to my home again” (Sophocles cited in Personae). However, the author has not been very articulate in his manipulation with the behavior of Oedipus at this point in the story since it is not consistent with the behavior carried by the character of King Oedipus since the start of the story. It seems as if King Oedipus had been forced by the author into the gown of misfortune when there could be a more easy way to make him deserve the destination he had. As a person, King Oedipus was quite considerate and useful for his community. His personality was quite appropriate to be a king. He was potentially incapable of knowingly committing such a heinous sin that would plague the whole land under his rule. Some members of the audience might consider his act at the crossroads as sinful, though that act could also not be considered as a crime as per the religious or civil law “or rather it would have been a crime if the victim had not chanced to be the king - and the slayer’s father, and if a further consequence had not been an incestuous marriage” (Gould 589). Oedipus was not sinful in any of these events of his life, as he did not know the truth. Like Plato, Oedipus believed in divinity and considered the interventions reasonable and ethically justified. As a responsible king, Oedipus makes every possible effort to rid the city of plague. Even the reason behind his emphasis on the oracle Teiresias was also the care of his people. Also, he considered it disgraceful not to investigate the murder of a king who had once led the city (Pope 159). He curses the unknown person who had killed Laius. More importantly, Oedipus did not retreat from his statement that he had originally made despite the fact that it required him to punish his own self. Had he been unjust by nature, he could have resolved to rely on Jocasta’s information that Laius had been killed by a group of robbers. Everybody considered this the truth and no one would ever blame Oedipus for not investigating the matter further for Jocasta was quite confident. But it was King Oedipus’s own conscience that would not let him rely on the information given by Jocasta specially that he remembered he had murdered a man at the junction of the three roads. Although he intuitively knew that he was on the loosing end (Erickson 706), he would not give up. King Oedipus was too sensitive, thoughtful, caring, considerate, just and bold. These were the very qualities in his personality that made him realize that he was the true murderer of Laius and thus, punish himself. Thus, it can be said that one’s personality goes hand in hand with one’s fate. King Oedipus’s choice to hear the name of the murderer despite Teiresias’s reluctance and his personal qualities destined him to be blind in the end of the play. Therefore, it becomes obvious that one’s choices and personality go hand in hand with one’s fate. Works Cited: Erickson, Michael. “Review: [untitled].” Theatre Journal: Theatre and Activism. vol. 55. no. 4. 2003: 706-708. Gould, Thomas. “The Innocence of Oedipus: The Philosophers on "Oedipus the King": II.” Arion, vol. 4, no. 4. 1965: 582-611. Personae, Dramatis. “Oedipus the King.” n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2011. . Pope, Maurice. “Addressing Oedipus.” Greece & Rome. 2nd Series. vol. 38. no. 2. 1991: 156- 170. Sophocles. Oedipus the King: Easyread Large Bold Edition. US: ReadHowYouWant, 2008. Print. Vellacott, P. H. “The Guilt of Oedipus.” Greece & Rome. 2nd Series. vol. 11. no. 2. 1964: 137- 148. Read More