Oedipus Rex: Role of Fate and Free Will

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex: Role of Fate & Free Will

Q. Oedipus Rex -Role of Fate and Free Will

Answer: The tragic fall of Oedipus depicted by Sophocles raises questions about the extent and impact of human agency in a world, where the intervention of deities is and fate seem to distort moral lives. The play, Oedipus Rex narrates how Oedipus inadvertently reveals the sins of parricide and incest buried in his family history while investigating the cause behind the plague in Thebes.

The revelation compels Jocasta to kill herself and her son/ husband to blind himself as an escape from intolerable reality. The macabre events of the play have inspired myriad inquiries into what or who was responsible for Oedipus’s misfortune. However, we interpret the play, it may be said that it Oedipus did not deserve the burden of guilt and sorrow that had been his portion. He had undermined Tiresias and suspected Creon for understandable reasons but these actions are not signs of a corrupt character that would warrant what happens to him in the course of the play since the sins for which he is punished are not arrogance or paranoia.

On the surface, it seems that Oedipus was instigated to act to his detriment- first when he left Polybus’s household and second when he unveils Laius's murderer – by oracular pronouncements. The oracles’ predictions are unconditional and therefore do not leave Oedipus any space to act to refute them; a fact that has made critics conclude that the oracles mark the site of divine intervention in Oedipus’s life and therefore absolve him of complicity in participating his own doom.

He is a man marked to suffer for the sake of suffering. A universe that sanctions such undeserved misery paints free will as an illusion where amoral gods disport with human lives to their own inscrutable ends. Such an interpretation, however, robs Oedipus of agency and dilutes the impact of the horror of his actions as felt and reviled by him and the Theban citizens.

Oedipus feels guilty of his actions, despite declaring that Apollo had “ordained his agonies”. This immense sense of personal responsibility that plagues Oedipus makes the audience aware that his actions were at least not entirely under divine control as evidenced by the fact that Oedipus blinds himself; something that even the great Tiresias had not predicted. The oracles therefore may not reveal the boundless power of the gods over human life, but only the gods’ foreknowledge of events which does not imply foreordination. The nature of divinity itself becomes limited in the sense that the gods may know what would befall Oedipus yet they do not interfere with his free will to choose how he would fall. Oedipus’s free will therefore becomes a function of his character.

Oedipus displays his heroic temperament when we see him discharge his duty as protector of the state and delve into the investigation despite dire warnings. He remains steadfast in his quest for truth even when refraining from the same would have been easier. He orchestrates the revelation of his birth history despite it not being a requirement of the prophecy-almost as if his character had compelled such an action. In such a scenario Oedipus as an individual seems unable to act outside of what his character dictates. His nature- a product of circumstance, proclivity, nature, et cetera- acts as a means by which Oedipus is steered to his doom. He is not as much as a victim of divine caprice as blind fate itself that circumscribes free will to reach a predetermined end.

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👉 The Illiad, (Book – I and Book II): The Character of Achilles

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👉 Greek Gods and Goddesses

👉 Abhijnanasakuntalam – Role of Kanva in Abhijnanasakuntalam (CC - I)