Fate And Freewill In Oedipus The King
One of the strongest themes in all of Greek drama is the conflict between fate and freewill. A lot of people have the need to feel like they have free will. This is clearly seen in the story of Oedipus by Sophocles because in the story all Sophocles ever wanted to do was stay clear of the prophecy that he was going to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Without that feeling of free will what do people really have, just a puppet going through the motions. I have really thought about the moments where I have felt like everything is based upon fate and this normally happens every time everything goes wrong, like the time a tree fell on to our car and 1000’s of bees flew out or the time that I was told that I would never play professional
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sports. This is similar to Oedipus and how he was told that he would end up sleeping with his mother and killing his father because when I am trying to be the best that I can be I keep hurting myself on accident or something comes in my way. I feel like I am going in the right direction but only too late do I find out that I am going in the exact opposite direction. In life people generally dwell on the negative things, from adultery to Zoo’s burning down the negative things always capture our attention.
This is mostly due to the bad things staying in our mind for a very long time where the good things just happen smoothly and will go on without notice. This is where fate and freewill come into hand because when something bad happens it almost seems like it was destined by fate where whenever something good happens humans (including myself) like to take credit for it and call it free will. My life just like Oedipus is made up of left turns and right turns and sometimes we choose to go right instead of left thinking that right is actually left and in turn when something bad happens because of it the free will of turning right turns into fate. For Oedipus he turned towards a city that he thinks is a completely different one and using his free will to go right instead of left makes the fate of his “curse” become a reality and so he Oedipus kills his father on the road to the city. Where in my life when free will took me to the right instead of going left thinking that right was the right direction when it was infact wrong we met fate in the sense that a tree fell on top of our car. In a since humans can choose the path that we will walk down but we can not choose what we will stumble upon on the path, and so we try to make the path a good one and if all goes to plan we walk right down it and then go right on to the next path until we meet our
fate. Oedipus is unable to accept this until after it happens like so many other humans because it feels like nothing will go wrong because how impossible it will be for me of all people to be in a car accident. This is one of the things that impacts many people because it seems like we have the choice to decide if things will go right or wrong until after it happens and something does go wrong because then we see how much fate had its hand in the things that we do. The car accident for example could have been prevented if we had just gone to the left instead of the right but then for all we know fate would have caught up to us in a much more dramatic way. Things have to have a certain level of free will in them or else no humans would ever learn from their mistakes or understand what they did was wrong because they would just say that fate made them that way. That is why fate is considered the bad thing because it is what makes people step back and realise all of the things they have done wrong and reflect on the past present and how they want their “fate” to change. Yes it is ironic that people have to have free will in order to encounter fate but without that free will the fate would not have been fate because then it would have been in our hands and how can someone stop from being on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. Yes their free will let them choose that date but fate taught millions of others lessons from their loss. The lessons might be that life is precious to we are vulnerable but if terest did not succeed in the majority of the attacks on 9/11 then our security would be a lot lower today and an attack could be much worse than what happened on that day in 2001.
sports. This is similar to Oedipus and how he was told that he would end up sleeping with his mother and killing his father because when I am trying to be the best that I can be I keep hurting myself on accident or something comes in my way. I feel like I am going in the right direction but only too late do I find out that I am going in the exact opposite direction. In life people generally dwell on the negative things, from adultery to Zoo’s burning down the negative things always capture our attention.
This is mostly due to the bad things staying in our mind for a very long time where the good things just happen smoothly and will go on without notice. This is where fate and freewill come into hand because when something bad happens it almost seems like it was destined by fate where whenever something good happens humans (including myself) like to take credit for it and call it free will. My life just like Oedipus is made up of left turns and right turns and sometimes we choose to go right instead of left thinking that right is actually left and in turn when something bad happens because of it the free will of turning right turns into fate. For Oedipus he turned towards a city that he thinks is a completely different one and using his free will to go right instead of left makes the fate of his “curse” become a reality and so he Oedipus kills his father on the road to the city. Where in my life when free will took me to the right instead of going left thinking that right was the right direction when it was infact wrong we met fate in the sense that a tree fell on top of our car. In a since humans can choose the path that we will walk down but we can not choose what we will stumble upon on the path, and so we try to make the path a good one and if all goes to plan we walk right down it and then go right on to the next path until we meet our
fate. Oedipus is unable to accept this until after it happens like so many other humans because it feels like nothing will go wrong because how impossible it will be for me of all people to be in a car accident. This is one of the things that impacts many people because it seems like we have the choice to decide if things will go right or wrong until after it happens and something does go wrong because then we see how much fate had its hand in the things that we do. The car accident for example could have been prevented if we had just gone to the left instead of the right but then for all we know fate would have caught up to us in a much more dramatic way. Things have to have a certain level of free will in them or else no humans would ever learn from their mistakes or understand what they did was wrong because they would just say that fate made them that way. That is why fate is considered the bad thing because it is what makes people step back and realise all of the things they have done wrong and reflect on the past present and how they want their “fate” to change. Yes it is ironic that people have to have free will in order to encounter fate but without that free will the fate would not have been fate because then it would have been in our hands and how can someone stop from being on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. Yes their free will let them choose that date but fate taught millions of others lessons from their loss. The lessons might be that life is precious to we are vulnerable but if terest did not succeed in the majority of the attacks on 9/11 then our security would be a lot lower today and an attack could be much worse than what happened on that day in 2001.