Is Oedipus Responsible For His Downfall Analysis

Improved Essays
Register to read the introduction… However, if they did not believed in oracles and prophecies they should have stayed with their son, Oedipus. If we think about it, it was pure coincidence that Oedipus kill his father. In fact, by going away from Corinth he was trying to defeat his fate. Nevertheless, he didn't knew that his real father was Laius and not Polybus.

As I said before, even though he is not the only one to blame for his downfall, he is the major person responsible for his ruin. Oedipus is responsible for his own downfall because of his ability to solve riddles. He was the one that saved the city of Thebes from the Sphinx by answering the puzzle. If he had never answer the riddle he would not have been named the King of Thebes. Tiresias says to Oedipus that his ability to solve riddles was his own ruin. In this case he would not have sleep with his mother. However, he has already killed his own father, nevertheless, he would never know that.

He is also responsible because of his detective
…show more content…
We can clearly see this when Tiresias tells him what is to come and Oedipus refuse to listen to him because Oedipus believe that Tiresias was not saying the truth and the whole thing was a conspiracy made by Tiresias and Creon against him. "Creon! Is this conspiracy his or yours?" (Line 431) "If the two of you had never put heads together, we would never have heard about my killing Laius." (Line 639) Oedipus brought his fate upon himself by a combination of pride, ignorance and willpower. However, Tiresias states it as an act of fate when he says "What will come will come. Even if I shroud it all in silence." (Line

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Tiresias, who knows better about the nature of the future and the gods, reminds Oedipus that the only the gods cause his downfall; he is only their messenger. Oedipus is ignorant of the fact that his fate lies in the hands of the gods, not in the control of mortals. Tiresias, despite his blindness, sees past Oedipus’ naïve understanding of fate and into the cruel mechanism of the gods. The gods ordain a punishment to Oedipus since birth, while he is blameless. Even though Oedipus is guilty of the crimes the prophecy foretold, he is only a puppet of the gods. Later, Oedipus insists that he is not guilty to Jocasta by retelling the story of his life before arriving at Thebes. He points out that he cannot be the murderer of his father, since when he learned of his prophecy, “‘I went where I should never see the disgrace / Of my evil oracles be brought to pass’” (770-771). In other words, Oedipus thinks that by running away from Corinth, he can escape his fate. He unwittingly carries out a part of his downfall by returning to Thebes, where his real parents live, setting off the chain reaction that leads to his downfall. The gods twist Oedipus’ desire to protect his parents into the next step of his destruction. His misfortune continues when he recognizes that the stranger in the chariot he killed could have been his father. Oedipus finishes his account and reflects on the incident at the crossroads: “‘I killed them…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus As A Tragic Hero

    • 1493 Words
    • 6 Pages

    After Oedipus saved Thebes and its people from the Sphinx who had enslaved them by answering the riddle, he began to think that he was beyond the reproach of the Gods. Oedipus thought that his wisdom made him smarter that the oracles so smart in fact that he believed that he could outsmart fate by running from it. It was not only pride but also Oedipus’ ignorance that lead to his downfall and tragic end. At the very beginning of the play Oedipus questions the priest as to why there is so much sorrow and crying out to the Gods. When the priest answers that there is a plague upon the land and its people and that they wish for Oedipus to help them again as he helped them before. “I know that you are deathly sick; and yet, Sick as your, not one is as sick as I” (Sophocles 250). Oedipus does not show humility, but instead tells the children that he has pity for them even though not one of them has suffered as much as he has. “King Oedipus is the most pathetic in terms of suffering, that is, in terms of a reversal of fortune due in part to a hamartia, the chief Aristotlian criterion for “pathe” (Abade-Yeboah, Ahenkora and Amankwa 10). “I say you live in hideous shame with those Most dear to you. You can not see the evil” (Sophocles 958). Even before Oedipus finally quit blaming everyone for his suffering and accusing people of conspiring to overthrow him, Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother/wife…

    • 1493 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Book Of Job Vs Odyssey

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Oedipus is the son of Laius and Jocasta, the King and Queen of Thebes. Because he was fated to murder his father and marry his mother, Laius has Oedipus chained to a mountainside. However, he is instead delivered to Polybus and Merope, the King and Queen of Corinth. As Oedipus becomes older he learns of his fate, so he runs away from Corinth as he believes Polybus and Merope to be his biological parents. While he is away, Oedipus argues with and murders a stranger on the road, kills the Sphinx, and becomes the new king of Thebes and husband of Jocasta. Even though the characters within "Oedipus Rex" know of Oedipus' awful fate and take precautionary measures, they actually perfectly allow it to happen. This shows that there is no escaping the fate given to one by gods.…

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus was blinded, he had a long conversation with Creon why he killed Laius. Creon tells Oedipus that “If you think a man can sin against his own kind and not be punished for it, I say you are mad” (Fitts, and Fitzgerald). Here Creon is presenting his case and defense that you do not kill your own. Creon had to prove that his innocence to Oedipus. “You do wrong when you take good men for bad and bad men for good. A true friend is thrown aside why, is life itself not more precious?” Creon tried everything to prove himself. In spite of all that has happened, Oedipus was convinced still that Creon was the murderer. “The news came that King Polybus has died a natural death appears at first to support her claim that the oracles and prophets are not to be feared, this good news for the house of Oedipus should also cure his anxiety which has so distressed the city” (Newton) As we take another look at Oedipus downfall, he did not want to listen to the prophet. He also did not want to listen when it was told that he was adopted. How could this be? My parents were Polybus and Merope. Oedipus was not ready to receive what he had done. While the discussion was going back and forth, Fitt and Fitzgerald recorded Tiresias saying” I say that you are the murderer whom you seek”. As the evidence begin to mount, the table turned to him. Believing the gods had his fate in their hands. Perhaps “the…

    • 1528 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus does not deserve his fate. His parents had originally given him as a baby to the Herdsman to be killed, to keep the prophecy from becoming fulfilled. The Herdsman said, “I was to kill…

    • 820 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since birth fate chose Oedipus to kill his father, and marry his mother, after his parents found out about his prophecy they tied his feet together and left him in the mountains to die, but unfortunately for his parents a Shepherd found him and gave him away to his adopted parent in Corenth. After learning about his prophecy Oedipus left Corinth to go to thebes for the sake of his adopted parents. On the way to thebes Oedipus's bad temper caused him to kill multiple men on the way to Thebes, which ultimately ended in him killing his own father. Without knowing about anything Oedipus solved the Sphinx's riddle became king of Thebes and married his mother Jocasta for all he knows he left his parents in corrent. After becoming king Oedipus was so determined to save Thebes from the…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Truth In Oedipus Rex

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Oedipus was then adopted by the King and Queen of Corinth. He believed that they were both his birth parents, so, when Oedipus had not stayed ignorant to the truth about the prophecy, he left in order that the prophecy not be fulfilled. Because of this event, Oedipus to meet Laius on a street. He then killed his own father by “swinging my club in this right hand I [Oedipus] knocked him out of his car, and he rolled on the ground. I [Oedipus] killed him.” Oedipus then continued on to marry his mother proving the prophecy about Oedipus being “damned in his birth, in his marriage, damned in the blood he shed with his own hands!” This event, of leaving the king and queen of Corinth, shows again the downfall of knowing the truth, causing him to to be pushed into following the prophecy. The direct effect of Oedipus knowing the truth and leaving Corinth is Oedipus killing Laius. This shows once again that, in the matter of knowing the truth, in is better to be ignorant of the truth than know the result…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus Tragic Hero

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages

    He had a fate that couldn't be reversed, the third and final reason as to why Oedipus was a tragic hero. Oedipus was very fortunate in the end, he was originally supposed to be banished from Thebes straight away for being the murder of king Laius, and instead wasn't. That doesn't diminish the fact that he couldn't change his fate, though. When Oedipus is speaking to the Chorus he says, "It was Apollo, friends, Apollo, who brought to fulfill all my sufferings." (75) When Oedipus said this, he was saying that Apollo had all along predicted his fate, he was just too blind to realize it. It was Oedipus who had carried out the prophecy, but it was Apollo who had foreseen his misfortune. The final quote to prove that Oedipus has an irreversible fate is when he proclaims, "But I should not speak of things that should never have been done." (77) Oedipus recognizes the evil in which he lived all this time, but he also acknowledges the fact that it should've never had happened. He knows Apollo has his fate set in stone, and nothing he could've done would change that, but he is very bitter over everything that had happened and doesn't quite understand why it all happened to him. In any case, no matter what Oedipus could've done, fate would've always caught…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Then [he] killed them all”, and also said that if “that stranger was somehow linked to Laius, who is now more unfortunate than I?” (Sophocles 977). He killed someone even with the knowledge of his horrible fate that consists of killing someone. His lack of knowledge of the person leads to his actions. This shows how his ignorance results in this action that fulfills one of the most important parts of the prophecy. This shows dramatic irony because of how Oedipus did not know that his father was Laius while the reader and audience did. It is obvious when he does the one thing that starts the completion of the prophecy. This reveals part of Oedipus’s character, how he is oblivious to the consequences he faces with his actions. He does not think about how his actions affect his future, and this flaw leads to his downfall. He still believes that Polybus is his father, and this ignorance to the truth of his past led him to where he ended up. When Oedipus learned that he killed Laius, he still thought that the second part of the prophecy has not come true. He also believed that if he went back to his native land that, “[he] must get…

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the play, Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles, Laius received a prophecy stating that his son would murder him and lay with his wife. This prophecy directly influenced Laius's decision making on how to raise his son. Laius had his son exiled from Thebes to die. Laius's son now named Oedipus was saved from death so both Laius's and Oedipus's fate would come to fruition. The prophecy sent from Apollo, god of light and music, led Oedipus to make decisions such as where to live, who to live with, and how to interact with family members. In the end Oedipus's fate did come true despite the grand measures taken to prevent it. However, the true tragedy of the play was not Oedipus's fate, It was Oedipus's search for…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He was warned by a drunken man that the man and woman he believed to be his parents were not his parents (Sophocles lines 895-900). One day when asked to step aside for some men on the road he became angry and killed them all (Sophocles lines 920-936). Oedipus not being able to control his anger and his ego caused his tragic fate to start. Some may argue that Oedipus was doomed the day he was born. However, I believe that certain actions can cause your fate to go several ways. In Oedipus case his moment of anger caused him to kill his own father.…

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus' decisions act as a burden that prompts to his ruin. The general population of Thebes instruct him to quit scanning such a great amount for reality and just not stress over his actual character. In any case, Oedipus just needs to stop to find who he genuinely is, and finds the most troublesome way that is available to do so. At first he is in every way convinced and unaware of the new viewing and anything that isn't his bearing. Regardless, Oedipus makes everything else in the play happen, and all that he does results in new issues to himself since he is unfaltering to listen to…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Because he fled his hometown and escaped from Polybus, the man he presumed was his biological father, in hopes of disproving Apollo, he ends up killing his real father, Laius. Following this, he chose Thebes as a spot to reign, married his real mother, Jocasta, and produced babies with her. Surely, something in him caused him to act this way, as if he was never told the truth of the oracle, likely none of this would have happened. He resembles a person with a mind of their own, yet many factors relinquish Oedipus of sanity, making him under the controls of the Gods. If in fact, he was actually in full control of his conduct, he would have proceeded life with more caution, and ultimately, none of these setbacks would have happened. He gave it his best to avoid the harsh reality, but without authority over his own actions, it is evident that he ends up fulfilling his prophecy, just as Apollo…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Though it is true that Oedipus committed numerous vile crimes, it was not his fault. What the other team failed to realize is Oedipus’ fate was prophesied. The claim that he was overtaken by evil to carry out such actions does not work as his fate, like all prophecies, was bound to happen. No matter how hard he could have tried to avoid his fate, he would still end up with same result. Oedipus undertook everything in his power to escape his tragic destiny, but failed to do so since it could not be changed. In fact, readers of the story are provided with knowledge of the tragedy to come, making the statement of a fate set in stone much more credible.…

    • 387 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oedipus Tragic Flaw

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Oedipus Rex, a tragedy written by Sophocles, features Oedipus as a tragic hero with an unavoidable fate. This tragedy explores Oedipus’ quest for his true identity. His search for Laius’ murderer leads him on a search for the truth regarding his birth. Eventually, Oedipus discovers he has committed murder and incest, resulting in his exile from Thebes and his ultimate downfall. According to Aristotle’s view on tragedies and tragic heroes, a tragic hero must possess a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. As a tragic hero, Oedipus possesses the tragic flaw of hubris, which is displayed when he attempts to alter his fate, denies any accusations against him, and ignores the warnings of others.…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays