Finding Fate In Sophocles Oedipus The King

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In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, there is a theme of trying to escape one’s fate. Jocasta, the queen of Thebes, knows that her husband will be killed by their child. Though she knows that it is her husband’s fate, she believes that she can alter it by abandoning their child on the side of the road. She thinks by completing this action she will be able to preserve her husband’s life.
Jocasta knows that she cannot change anything that is known to happen in the future, but she does what she thinks will be best for her husband, Laius. Once her son and her new husband, Oedipus, begins to put the pieces together that he murdered his father and married his mother, he tries to keep himself in denial. He continues to deny many of the facts that he had learned.
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