The story of Oedipus introduces a king faced with a hamartia that ends up being his downfall. Throughout the story, Oedipus seemed destined for misfortune. Faced with an internal conflict; he is forced to find the truth of his past and fall from his grace. Oedipus’s pride plays a major role in his downfall. Although, the fault of his actions both lies on Oedipus and the gods. Oedipus’s search for the truth reveals his pride; his blindness to accept the truth, as well as the victim of his actions.
Oedipus’s tragic flaw is his pride. Oedipus believes that he has worked for everything he had gotten and that he is a generally good person. When he was first informed about the prophecy he quickly fled the town he believed his parents were in to save them from himself. Oedipus was willing to be a drifter; alone without a place to call home. After defeating the Sphinx and saving Thebes from destruction and sorrow, he believed he was being rewarded for giving up his comfort and happiness to save; who he assumed to be his parents, that it was his peripety. Sadly, he was mistaken because his fate had much more installed for him.
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There are numerous arguments that Oedipus was a pawn of the gods; that he didn’t have a say in the matter of his destiny. Bowra stated, “The activity of the gods is an essential part of King Oedipus. Oedipus is their victim. They have ordained a life of horror for him, and they see that he gets it. He is even the instrument by which their plans are fulfilled. The prophecy … leaves him no escape. He fulfills it in ignorance of what he is doing, but he must fulfill it” (185). The gods have already decided to use Oedipus as an example; to be more humble, so his life has been mapped out since before his arrival to the world. Therefore, there was no possible way for Oedipus to really make important decisions about his life. The gods had essentially placed Oedipus in a maze; he could take various roots, but he would eventually end up where the gods had wanted him. The god’s minds were also set on the example being Oedipus because he was the perfect candidate; the lesson could only be learned by a person of significance and intellect, they had to be special.
Albeit, Oedipus isn’t all innocent in his story; he made his choices. Whitman says, “But there is no will of the gods, so far as Oedipus is concerned, except insofar as his own will possesses a divine force. The Olympians have not willed his fall; they have foretold it. To say that the gods are responsible, as Oedipus does means at most that they permit life to be as it turns out to be” (194). The gods only offered Oedipus a glimpse of what his future could be, they “foretold” it; they didn’t set it in stone. Oedipus was free to make his choices and it was his own choices that lead him to what the gods had prophesied.
There is no clear answer of who was at fault when it came to the choices of Oedipus’s life. On one hand, the gods did choose Oedipus as the one to be made a lesson of; setting a vision. Although on the other hand, Oedipus was free to make his own choices; he ended up killing his father at his own will. The balance doesn’t tilt one way or the other, so it can be assumed that while the gods had set a path for Oedipus, he was still given the option of not fulfilling the prophecy. In the end, Oedipus is able to achieve his anagnorisis through the search for the murderer of Laius; which was what the gods had essentially wanted.
Oedipus’s search for his truth reveals his pride; his blindness to accept the truth, as well as the victim of his actions; both Oedipus and the gods. As the story progresses, Oedipus is faced with an internal conflict which leads to his fall from grace; his pride playing a major role. Albeit, the cause for Oedipus’s downfall lies on both the shoulders of gods and Oedipus. The tragedy of Oedipus exhibits that the search for oneself can lead to unexpected truths; not all truths are liberating, but accepting them and taking responsibility; all actions have consequences, allows the light to shine on your true self.
Works Cited
- Bowra, Cecil Maurice. Sophoclean Tragedy. Clarendon Press, 1945.
- Whitman, Cedric H. Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism. Harvard University Press, 1951.
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