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Are human beings in control of their fate? The story of Oedipus shows that it is not. Oedipus did try to escape his fate a lot of times, but couldn’t because no matter how much you try to run from your fate, you just cannot escape it anyway, what is meant to be, will always find a way to you. He tried his best to run from the prophecy. First by deciding not to return to Corinth, the city where he grew up, and to never see the people he thought were his parents ever again, because he thought staying away from them will prevent the prophecy from getting real. Ironically, it was this action that led him to kill his real father Laius and to marry his mother Jocasta. When a heavy-handed man on the road nearly runs him down and then knocks him savagely, Oedipus hastily kills his attacker, who turns out to be his real father.
Also, he tried facing the Sphinx (a monster who was a winged lion with a human, female face), even after knowing that if he fails to answer her riddle he will die, because the Sphinx would leave people alone only when she got an answer to her riddle. Many tried to guess it, but failed and were killed. But Oedipus didn’t care about it since he had nothing to lose, instead he was happy about the thought that if he died then the prophecy might end. But surprisingly, Oedipus answered the riddle and won the reward, i.e., the throne of Thebes and the hand of Jocasta, the widowed queen (his real mother), that the Thebans promised to anyone who would free them from the Sphinx. So, just as he thinks himself free of his fate, he runs right into it literally. It is clear when he says “Exactly, He is my last hope – I am waiting for the shepherd. He is crucial” that how desperately Oedipus does not want to face the obvious truth and pretends not to see it, even after sensing that he did kill a man with similar appearance as Jocasta’s description of Laius and in similar circumstances as Jocasta’s description of the crossroad. Jocasta said that she was told by some servant that Laius was killed by a whole ‘band of thieves’. Neither could face the possibility of what it would mean if the servant turned out to be wrong.
His desperate attempts to escape fate arises not from ambition or pride, but from an understandable and desperate desire to live without committing disgraceful offenses. But even though he could not get away from his fate, he still had his free will to make his own decisions and face the events that were thrown at him because of his fate. Then, when he gets to know about the death of Polybus, his foster father, and the people of Corinth wanted to crown Oedipus as their king, he denied the offer and refused to go back to Corinth because he was afraid about the prophecy getting real. His fear was clearly depicted when he told the messenger from Corinth: “Never, I will never go near my parents. Always, terrified Apollo’s oracle might come true”. But none of his attempts seemed to have make any difference, because there was no way that Oedipus could have changed a curse that he was given before his birth. Also, he seemed to have inherited this attitude from his parents, who initially tried to kill their own son in order to avoid the fate. Oedipus went through major conflict with his fate, and within the conflict there are events with conflicts of their own. Even though Oedipus could not get away from his fate, the events that would lead up to his death could vary, but in the end his fate would come true. His life was a tragedy of fate and its tragic effect depended on the conflict between the all-powerful will of the gods and the vain efforts of human beings threatened with disaster.
Perhaps the story of Oedipus is meant to show that error and disaster can happen to anyone, that human beings are relatively powerless before fate or the gods, and that a cautious humility is the best attitude toward life.
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