Destiny, Fate, and Free Will in Oedipus the King - A Victim of Fate :: Oedipus Rex Essays

Oedipus the King as a Victim of indispensability         Among the first thing a historian discovers in his study of earlier civilization are records of peoples belief, or faith, in powers greater than themselves, and their desire to consider what causes these powers to act. People everywhere wonder ab surface the marvelous things in the riff and on the earth. What makes the rain?  How do the plants and animals live and grow and die?  why are some people lucky and others unlucky?  Some bank in free will while others believe in unavoidableness or destiny.  In the play Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Oedipus was a consecutive victim of fate.         Gods and goddesses were believed to be responsible for the wonders of science, and the vagaries of human nature therefore, according to the facts of this story, Oedipus was a true victim of fate for several reasons.  Laius and Jocasta, the pincerless king and male monarch of Thebes, were told by the god Apollo that their son would kill his generate and marry his contract (page 56).  A son was born to them, and they tried to make sure that the prognostication would not come true. They drove a metal pin with the infants ankles and gave it to a shepherd, with instructions to leave it to die.  The shepherd pitied the little infant so he gave the child to another shepherd.  This shepherd gave the baby to a childless king and queen of Corinth, Polybus and Merope.  This royal couple named the boy Oedipus, which in its Hellenic form Oidipous means swollen foot. Oedipus was brought up believing that Polybus and Merope were his real parents, and Lauis and Jocasta believed that their child was dead and the prophecy of Apollo was false. Many years later, he was told by a drunk man at a banquet that he was not a true heir of Polybus (page 55).  He then went to the oracle of Apollo, to bring the god who his real parents were.  All he was told was that he would kill his father and marry his mother (page 56).  He resolved never to return to Corinth, to Polybus and Merope, and started out to make a new life for