Brent Hardy

Mr. Ramsey

English 102

April 28, 2003

 

Oedipus: A Slave to Actions, Not a Slave to Fate

 

            Oedipus the King contains elements of prophecy, a concept that may cause confusion with modern readers.  The Greek concept of prophecy was much different from what we see prophecy as today.  The play is marked, as are many Greek tragedies, by a series of prophecies that foretell of events which unfold during the play.  There are many implications of the prophecies in Oedipus the King that affect the way characters act, but in the end do not affect their free will in that the characters act according to their own wishes.  However, the characters act mostly with a desire to avoid the prophecy and in doing so make it happen.  The prophecies in Oedipus Rex are used as plot devices and do not show how the true fates of the characters are accomplished, but the characters bring about their own fates through their actions instead of having it handed down from the gods.

            Prophecies were used in Aristotelian tragedies to hint at what is to come in the play.  Prophecy in the Hellenic traditions (the religious observances of Ancient Greece) played a profound role in the way the common man viewed the world.  In modern times a prophecy can be viewed as limiting a person’s free will, and in our monotheistic mindset we cannot comprehend how a certain fate for each individual can be set into motion without circumscribing a person’s freedom to choose his or her own path.  To the Greeks, though, there were many gods, each vying for control over human affairs, as is shown by the Chorus when they talk of “raging Ares who…burns me” and then cries for Zeus to “destroy him with your thunderbolt” (195, 207).  Therefore, what one god hopes to bring to pass may be thwarted by a rival, or the god who gives a prophecy may abort it himself if certain prerequisites are met.  When a prophecy was made, there is no hint that it somehow bound a person’s free will.  The gods were just saying that, in the end, it will come to pass.  Thus prophecy came to be used in plays because, as the article Irony within Oedipus Rex points out, “in Greek tragedies, oracles and prophecies are employed primarily to foreshadow events and help create ironies within the play.”  It is an excellent tool to use to show people what is going to happen without letting them see beforehand how it will affect the characters mentally.  One can imagine how the crowded masses would feel when they know what is to come of Oedipus, being that they are already familiar with the story, just like the vague prophet Tiresias does.  As Aristotle writes in his Poetics, "Among plots and actions of the simple type, the episodic form is the worst. I call episodic a plot in which the episodes follow one another in no probable or inevitable sequence" (Aristotle 760). In this form of tragedy, the events must be inevitable.  Prophecy serves in this aspect of plot development quite nicely, and is therefore most important aspect in tragedies.  It is a tool to foreshadow the plot to the audience, much like using a familiar myth as the basis for a play, but does not implicate that free will is being impinged.

            The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi has prophesied in Oedipus the King that Laius and Jocasta will have a son who will kill his father and marry his mother as warning to them to change their course.  They choose to kill their son instead of allowing him to become a threat, and play into the hand of fate.  Laius and Jocasta, by not loving their child, allowed him to be raised by another family, and when he returned to Thebes he fulfilled the prophecy they most feared.  Janet Franks says in her essay that “the inscrutable gods exert extreme power over the unjust and the just, who suffer alike from their mysteriously random power,” but is that power really random?  The gods knew that Jocasta and Laius were not destined to be good parents, at least not if they stayed on the road they were traveling.  They pushed them into alienating their child out of fear of a prophecy, but it was not fate.  There are no gods in heaven or hell that can force parents into loving or not loving their child; love is simply part of the human condition.

            Oedipus falls from grace because of his pride, which sets up a chain of events that eventually destroys him.  His pride is shown when we hear how he kills four members of a band of travelers as he first enters Thebes, a retinue bearing his father, the king, because of their arrogance, the act which begins his descent.  It is shown in his persistence at finding the murderer of the former king, whose residence in Thebes is causing the plague.  He has enjoyed popularity during his rule and honestly thinks he can accomplish any task for his subjects.  His final act of pride, the one which pronounces his doom and reveals how he has been a pawn of fate, causes him to delve into a matter which Jocasta warns him will be his undoing.  He discovers how he murdered his father and married his newly-widowed mother, causes Jocasta to kill herself, and, in the stygian mire of grief and shame, “he snatched the pins of worked gold from her dress…and struck into the ball-joints of his eyes” (1278).  Oedipus begs of Creon, “do not take them (his children) from me ever,” while Jocasta gives the infant Oedipus to a shepherd to be exposed to Cithaeron.  Oedipus is blameless in that he cares deeply for his children.  He also cares deeply for his subjects, as is shown when he outwits the sphinx and tries to vanquish the curse on Thebes.  However, Oedipus, by his own actions, brings his fate upon himself when he kills a man out of anger.  He then forces the truth from an innocent shepherd, the one responsible for saving his life, and it drives him mad.  He is solely responsible for his own fate, and is not “the gods’ most hated man,” as he calls himself.  Other instances of prophecy foreshadow other aspects of the tragedy.  Tiresias tells Oedipus that “Those jeers you hurl at me before long all these men will hurl at you,” hinting at Oedipus’s future blindness after he taunts the blind seer by saying “you have no strength, blind in your ears, your reason, and your eyes” (377, 376).  Tiresias is a well-respected prophet who knows what is to come but is too horrified, and pities his king too much, for him to casually reveal it to the masses.  While Oedipus is accusing Tiresias, the Choragos, Creon, even the Oracle at Delphi of conspiring against him, Tiresias hints about the outcome of the broiling conflict.  Oedipus, desperate to find Laius’s killer in order to end the threat to his city, vows that he will “ally myself in war…against the one who did it,” and “catch the one who did it with his hand,” a task he accomplishes when he finds out the truth and banishes himself (249, 271).

            Oedipus the King shows us that we can try to avoid our fate, but that only leads us blindly into its grip.  Its moral is that a man can be happy and envied and powerful, have a good family and a comfortable life, only one day to find he’s sleeping with his mother, his children are his siblings, had murdered his father, his entire life is a lie, and be driven to such grief by his mother/wife’s death that he uses her dress pins to stab out his own eyes.  The irony of the play is that this comes from a man who, only hours before, everyone had considered favored by the gods.  The absurdness of thinking this man is blessed is apparent.   Unfortunately for Oedipus, though, his cursed life is a product of his own hubris, and not the fault of the gods.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

 

, Sebastian.  "Irony within Oedipus Rex."  http://www.literatureclassics.com/essays/233/

 

Aristotle. “Poetics.” Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.

 

Green, Janet M.  “Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex.” "The Explicator." vol. 51, p. 5, Fall 1992