The Fate Case

The Gods are able to see past, future and present. Oracles and prophets reveal to people their destinies proclaiming the will of the Gods. Some people want to avoid the fate that was predicted to them by oracles and prophets, but not always can do it. Sophocles poses to us one of the most important questions: who rules human destiny - the gods, or people themselves? In search of an answer to this perennial question the heroes of the tragedy do all possible to avoid the terrible predictions; and they think they do everything they can. The stories of King Oedipus and Antigone show that fate in their cases is inevitable.

Theban King Laius and Queen Jocasta cannot have children. They go to the oracle, who predicted that the born child would kill his father and marry his mother. When their son is born, Laius orders to rivet his feet together and leave the baby to die on the mountain Cithaeron with his legs tied, in the hope that the baby would not survive, and the prediction of the oracle will not come true. However, shepherds find the boy and give him to the Corinthian king Polybius. Being childless Polybius keeps the boy at home and raises him as his own son.

But once at the feast one of the drunken guests shouted: "Thou art not true son of thy sire" (p.29). Oedipus in confusion goes to the Delphic oracle, and the oracle predicts Oedipus "woes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire; to wit [he] should defile his mother's bed and raise up seed too loathsome to behold, and slay the father from whose loins [he] sprang" (p.29). In order to avoid the terrible fate Oedipus decides to leave Corinth. On his way from Delphi to Thebes, Oedipus kills the old man, who turns out to be Laius, King of Thebes.

Arriving at Thebes, Oedipus answers the riddle of the Sphinx and becomes Theban King, and marries widowed queen Jocasta. Oedipus and Jocasta live happily; they have two boys and two girls. But the grievous plague falls upon Thebes. Oedipus sends Creon to the oracle to find out how to save the State, and the answer is: "to punish [Laius'] takers-off, whoe'er they be" (p.6). Oedipus promises to find his murderers and to revenge "as though [Laius] were [his] sire" (p.10), and curses them: "And on the murderer this curse I lay ... : Wretch may he pine in utter wretchedness"(p.9). But he does not know yet that he did not manage to deceive the gods, and that the killed man, Laius, is his father, and the widow of the murdered king that he married is his own mother.

Oedipus also asks Creon to fetch prophet Teiresias, "... of all men best might guide a searcher of this matter to the light" (p.10). Teiresias tells Oedipus: "... thou art the murderer of the man whose murderer thou pursuest" (p.14). Oedipus does not believe him thinking that Teiresias and Creon decided to overthrow him; but starts thinking that he did not cheat fate, and the oracle's