The Three Theban Plays: Tales of Fate and Predetermined Suffering
Fate as defined in the Oxford Dictionary is the ”[uncountable] power that is believed to control everything that happens and that cannot be stopped or changed.” When referring to free will, one might define it was the acting without the constraint of fate. It is the ability to act at one’s own discretion. The ancient Greeks acknowledged the role of Fate as a reality outside oneself that shaped and determined life. The Theme “Fate vs. Free Will” is applicable to Sophocles’s three Theban plays: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus. In the three Theban plays, the lives of the characters have set ends. Regardless of each action their destiny is controlled by a predetermined …show more content…
Throughout the play, Oedipus questions Tiresias, Creon, Jocasta, the oracle and his other for information regarding the current circumstances in Thebes. Each character refuses to give him a thorough answer. When Oedipus defeats the Sphinx by solving the riddle, he accepts the thrown and marries the former kings wife. If his decision were different it may have altered the course of events. However, even once Oedipus changes his outlook and adjusts his leadership he still suffers. One might argue that if he did not accept the gifts, he would not have lead to his own demise. Oedipus was concerned about the current circumstances in Thebes. He sends Creon to the oracle at Delphi and when he returns he asks Creon “How can we cleanse ourselves—what rites? What’s the source of trouble?” (164) Creon after visiting the oracle answers “Banish the man, or pay back blood with blood. Murder sets the plague-storm on the city” (164) Oedipus goes as far as cursing the man who killed King Laius without realizing that it was himself. Oedipus soon finds out that he is the man who killed Laius, which also proves that he followed his predetermined fate. His wife and mother Jacosta tells him, “You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see—you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!” (205) Oedipus regardless of how he acted still …show more content…
(60)
This discussion lays out Antigone’s fate as she decides to bury her brother Polyneices and accept the consequences. Antigone believes following her fate set by the gods is more important than following a law set by the king. Antigone is caught by the guards while burying her brother. Her love for her family set her fate:
Now, in the face of death oblivious of the presence of Creon and the chorus, with no public case to make, no arguments to counter, she can at last identify the driving force behind her action, the private, irrational imperative which was the root of her championship of the rights of family and the dead against the demands of the state. It was her fractional devotion to one particular family, her own, the doomed, the incestuous, accursed house of Oedipus and especially to its most fortunate member, the brother whose corpse lay exposed to the birds and dogs. (49)
She accepted her fate prior to burying her brother. She acknowledges that she buried her brother for her family. Regardless of the action she may have commit, her death would have been the final
Fate as defined in the Oxford Dictionary is the ”[uncountable] power that is believed to control everything that happens and that cannot be stopped or changed.” When referring to free will, one might define it was the acting without the constraint of fate. It is the ability to act at one’s own discretion. The ancient Greeks acknowledged the role of Fate as a reality outside oneself that shaped and determined life. The Theme “Fate vs. Free Will” is applicable to Sophocles’s three Theban plays: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus. In the three Theban plays, the lives of the characters have set ends. Regardless of each action their destiny is controlled by a predetermined …show more content…
Throughout the play, Oedipus questions Tiresias, Creon, Jocasta, the oracle and his other for information regarding the current circumstances in Thebes. Each character refuses to give him a thorough answer. When Oedipus defeats the Sphinx by solving the riddle, he accepts the thrown and marries the former kings wife. If his decision were different it may have altered the course of events. However, even once Oedipus changes his outlook and adjusts his leadership he still suffers. One might argue that if he did not accept the gifts, he would not have lead to his own demise. Oedipus was concerned about the current circumstances in Thebes. He sends Creon to the oracle at Delphi and when he returns he asks Creon “How can we cleanse ourselves—what rites? What’s the source of trouble?” (164) Creon after visiting the oracle answers “Banish the man, or pay back blood with blood. Murder sets the plague-storm on the city” (164) Oedipus goes as far as cursing the man who killed King Laius without realizing that it was himself. Oedipus soon finds out that he is the man who killed Laius, which also proves that he followed his predetermined fate. His wife and mother Jacosta tells him, “You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children into the light no man can bear to see—you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!” (205) Oedipus regardless of how he acted still …show more content…
(60)
This discussion lays out Antigone’s fate as she decides to bury her brother Polyneices and accept the consequences. Antigone believes following her fate set by the gods is more important than following a law set by the king. Antigone is caught by the guards while burying her brother. Her love for her family set her fate:
Now, in the face of death oblivious of the presence of Creon and the chorus, with no public case to make, no arguments to counter, she can at last identify the driving force behind her action, the private, irrational imperative which was the root of her championship of the rights of family and the dead against the demands of the state. It was her fractional devotion to one particular family, her own, the doomed, the incestuous, accursed house of Oedipus and especially to its most fortunate member, the brother whose corpse lay exposed to the birds and dogs. (49)
She accepted her fate prior to burying her brother. She acknowledges that she buried her brother for her family. Regardless of the action she may have commit, her death would have been the final