Is Oedipus Responsible For His Fate Essay

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Can Oedipus be held responsible for his actions, if his fate is predestined?Oedipus left Corinth when he a drunken man told him that he was not the son of King Polybus and Queen Merope. Highly disturbed by this revelation, he seeks the counsel of the Delphi Oracle whom further foretells that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. To avoid such a fate, he leaves Corinth and sets out for Thebes. On his way there he meets an old man. Unknown to Oedipus, that man was his real father, Laius, King of Thebes. Oedipus enters into an altercation with the old man simply because, acting out of pride, he refuses to give him the right of way. The altercation leads to Oedipus' killing the man - Laius, his real father. If we were to think of this for one minute, we find that Oedipus is guilty of both pride and blindness. …show more content…
He refused to see the signs or heed the Oracle's warning. Instead, he thought that he had tricked the gods and escaped his fate by leaving Corinth. Oedipus, as you know, enters Thebes after answering the Sphinx's riddle, leading the monster to kill itself - he enters Thebes as a hero. Importantly, he marries the city's queen, Jocasta - a woman old enough to be his mother. Hence, despite having been warned that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus, in a fit of rage, kills a man old enough to be his father and, overcome by pride/hubris, marries a woman old enough to be his mother. Years later, Thebes suffers an infertility plague. It is assumed that the plague was an outcome of Oedipus' not having pursued the murder of King Laius. Accordingly, the prophet Teiresias is called so to shed light on the
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