March 30th, 2015 Oedipus the King: Fate versus Free Will Throughout Oedipus the King there are many prevalent themes that transpire in the story. One of these themes is fate versus free will and whether a person’s choices, or the god’s choices for them are more important. During the time that Sophocles’ wrote this play, the gods were very highly respected and honored for the control that they had on people’s lives’. Despite the changes that occurred because of free will, fate influence was much
literature is the idea of whether free will or fate controls a human being. This idea is brought up multiple times through the plot of the Greek play Oedipus the King by Sophocles. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King, the idea of fate versus free will is constantly at large; through the situations that occur throughout the play, it is clear that both these ideas play a role in the downfall of Oedipus. Throughout the course of the play, the idea of free will pops up constantly. This idea
Based on the analysis of Erich Auerbach, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King creates a distinction between foreground and background similar to the Old Testament due to temporal and spatial locators, the character’s background, and the ability to interpret the story; as a result, the text achieves its tragic effect through the interpretation of the story. In Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach makes a distinction between foreground and background by comparing Homer’s