Essay Comparing Oedipus The King And Hamlet

In the stories “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles and the movie Hamlet by William Shakespeare, dealt with the topic of fate. Even though the yet the plots are different both stories have common themes one of them being regicide. In Oedipus the King the past was revealed as the play progressed. In Hamlet the reader already know what is going on. Oedipus’s story surrounds him avoiding his fate. King Lauis and Queen Jacasta received a prophecy from the gods, saying that their son was going to “kill his father and marry his mother”. (check the book) Immediately the parents bind the ankles of their baby and sent him off to die along a mountain side in order for the prophecy to not be fulfilled. Instead of being left to die Oedipus was rescued and given …show more content…
While on the run, the prophecy became fulfilled once he killed King Lauis and majority of the king’s entourage. Oedipus eventually arrives in Thebes where there was a Spinx, a dreadful monster that killed anybody that could not solve his riddle. The riddle was, “what is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?” Once Oedipus came across the Sphinx and was the given the riddle, not only did he answer it correctly but it caused the Sphinx killed herself. The people of Thebes were so happy that they rewarded Oedipus by making him their king and gave him Queen Jocasta to be his wife. Years later, they Queen and the new King did not know of their mother son relationship until a terrible plague descended unto Thebes. An oracle said that the plague was sent because the murderer of the former King Lauis must be punished. Teiresias, a blind fortune teller informs Oedipus that the prophecy that he was running away from became true. Once Jacasta learned that she married her son she committed suicide while Oedipus “gouges his eyes out and exiles himself from