Fate And Free Will In Oedipus The King

In Oedipus the King, fate and free will play a huge role throughout the storyline. Only one however brought Oedipus to his death and downfall. Both points can be argued greatly! The ancient Greeks acknowledged fate as a reality outside an individual that developed and determined their life. It is that mankind does have control over his or her individual life. I assume that fate does indeed lead to Oedipus’s downfall. In the play, people lived their lives based on fate. The people relied on oracles to reveal this fate. Oedipus attempted to control this by using his free will. The oracle disclosed that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus wanted to prevent this from happening so he used his free will to control his life’s direction. He chose to leave his home in Corinth. He moved to the town of Thebes, where he met his love and had four children. Unbeknownst to him, fate had taken over and he moved to the city Thebes, where his birth parents actually lived. His love was later revealed as his birth mother. During his journey to Thebes he uses his free will once again. He encounters a caravan at the crossroads. Both Oedipus and the driver of
He no longer wanted to look at the misery he had caused himself and others. “you, you’ll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused! Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen, blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind from this hour on! Blind in the darkness-blind!” This tragic act was carried out by his own free will. Although in Greek mythology it is believed that the Gods controlled human will. So was it his free will or his fate chosen by the Gods to create this outcome. After gouging his eyes, he begs Creon to kill him, but he must wait for the oracle to determine his fate. He either stays in Thebes or will be cast out