Restriction of Free Will and Power of Fate Quote

A key theme in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles is the limits of an individual’s free will because fate will always run its course. A conversation between Teiresias and Oedipus is a perfect example of this theme:

Teiresias: Well, it will come what will, though I be mute.
Oedipus: Since come it must, thy duty is to tell me.
Teiresias: I have no more to say; storm as thou willst,
And give the rein to all thy pent-up rage.

Teiresias is saying that no matter what Oedipus does fate will catch up with him. The play is centered on prophecy, whose key component is fate. It opens with Creon saying that according to the oracles the plague will be ended if Thebes banishes the man who killed Laius. You begin to realize what is really going on when Oedipus tells Jocasta of a prophecy, that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother, similar to the prophecy given to Laius, that her son would grow up to murder his father. Oedipus argues against the validity of these prophecies and even tries to avoid them, but when they all come to fruition he is left to accept that fate will always plays its course. Oedipus seems to have no other choice but to fulfill his prophecy. He is sent away from Thebes and raised in Corinth, but he runs away when he hears about his prophecy to kill his father, but ends somehow replacing his father in Thebes marrying his mother. Oedipus does everything possible to change his fate, but it always continues to run its course regardless. Fate holds so much weight in the play that it is hard to place this entirety of the blame on Oedipus. It was not completely Oedipus’s ignorance, blindness, or foolishness that caused his demise; it was the fact that his fate was unavoidable. In accordance with Sophocles’ Greek philosophy, man is powerless when facing the fate chosen by the gods’.