In_the_Power_of_Fate__Oedipus_Rex

Fate cannot be overpowered by someone’s will, for conquer of Fate is endless. Even if the will is made by someone almighty; such as a reverent man like Oedipus the King in Sophocles play Oedipus Rex. Here, Sophocles uses Oedipus’s will, the dedication and determination he sets forth into helping the citizens of Thebes from the plague by identifying Laius killer and, along the way ,discovering the history behind his birth , to reveal the downfall he his intruded with at the end of his investigation. As a result, his devotion and care he holds for the people of Thebes, his arrogance and impulsive temper that has him fail in most critical situations, and his ignorance to others that only leads him to greater complications, effects such a defilement to his personal world and him pulling people down with him. The peripeteia part of the play occurs when the Messenger brings Oedipus bittersweet news of his background. In the play, Oedipus is destined to murder his father and marry his mother. His parents, Laius and Jocasta, try to anticipate the oracle by sending their son away to be killed, But is raised by two other rulers from another kingdom, Polybus and his wife, Merope. But fate brings Oedipus into an ironic situation. “ I grew up in chief among the men of Corinth until a strange thing happened-… I heard of all this and fled.” When the oracle instead told him that he would kill his father and marry his mother, he decided never to go home again and fled in the opposite direction- right toward his real parents. The disposition of the play is changed by this point in the story. The audience’s judgments have changed conspicuously and Oedipus will soon be downfallen to a weak, defenseless King. The cause of the peripeteia affected the anagnorisis, or recognition part of the play; which is situated when the shared testimonies of the Corinthian Messenger and the Shepherd make Oedipus realize that he's unintentionally fulfilled the prophecy he's struggled to avoid- “…It was said that the boy would kill his own father”. It is the Shepherd who reveals to Oedipus the prophecies that had been given regarding him, that he would kill his own father. Ironically, the Shepherd explains that he pitied the baby and therefore gave him to the messenger to have a new life, never thinking that by so doing he would actually damn him. “ O Light, may I look on you for the last time! Oedipus, damned in his birth, in his marriage, Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand!” The events and actions that were made to this point in the play seizes in the apotheosis, or the main point of the play. Based on the reveal of the prophecies, his parents, his wife, King Laius, the murderer of King Laius and the discovery of his birth, Oedipus, once again, attempts to take his own fate at risk again. He exits the stage to blind himself, to symbolically avoid the sight of the facts that he has just discovered. However, Oedipus does not kill himself because he wants himself to suffer. Oedipus has witnessed such pain he scrapes out his eyes so that the sight of the revealed prophecies may never trouble him again. Also, dying meant that he would be face to face with his parents, which was not an option of his for he was filled with compunction and disgrace. In the end, Oedipus, blinded by his own arrogance, learns that his own fate is indeed much more powerful than the wise, riddle-solving, heroic King himself. It took a great deal of events to finally have Oedipus realize that he had been the answer to all the problems he been so concerned about the entire time. Sophocles intentionally used the position of the King to make the dramatic circumstances teach about how Oedipus's downfall is in fact acknowledgeable. By ignoring the warnings of Teiresias, Oedipus puts himself above the Gods by believing that he can avoid or control his own fate.