Oedipus the King summary

September 28, 2022
Investo
Summary
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Oedipus the King summary.

One of the great themes in the play Oedipus the King is the character of fate and our response to fate.

Early in life, Oedipus wanted to know his true identity at the expense of his supposed parents, Polybus and Merapi, when a drunken man accused him that he was not really his parents’ son. When Apollo makes a terrible prophecy to Oedipus that he will kill his father and marry his mother. He left Corinth forever to save his Parents, but in doing so he inadvertently brought this fate upon himself.

The fate of Oedipus is an important issue, determining the fate of a person, not a human being. Trying to escape fate seems to be the thing that confirms that fate is inevitable, for example, Jocasta Shepherd tried to avoid her fate by telling her to abandon her child which leads to a chain of events where Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries Jocasta; survived to fulfill the prophecy.

Oedipus the King summary

Ignorant Oedipus once they gain the knowledge or perception that leads to the truth their vision or destiny becomes clear in many Greek tragedies and the prophecy relates to the Greek idea of hubris the limits set by the gods in an attempt to escape from it.

In the end, Oedipus tries to overcome his human limitations and refutes the prophecy that he could deny Oracle and change the course of destiny. Oedipus is guilty of arrogance in his fate. But in the end, it didn’t work out because the Oracle comes true at the end of the play.

Oedipus teaches us that the actions we take to change the prophecy help us to fulfill that prophecy. Jocasta also tried when she found out her child would marry her and her child would kill her husband.

When all the work was done to change the blind Tiresia’s prophecy, they forgot that he was a blind man who just repeated the prophecy and told everyone about what might happen in the future so that they would be careful but they try to change the prophecy. As a result, the prophecy has been fulfilled correctly and strictly.

Oedipus the King summary

When Oedipus learns about the prophecy, we see that there is a kind of thought working inside him that he thought that he could harm the parents who raised him. He left his city but he did not know that His parents weren’t in the city that raised him, they were not her parents, they were just her foster parents, so fate was right. Nothing else happened but there were so many things in life that he didn’t even understand because there was nothing wrong with Oedipus because it was a prophecy and only God can know when everyone knows exactly what happens in human life.

In our present life, we associate fate with the belief that doing something good will be good for us but sometimes there comes a time in our life when our fate is gone. We don’t realize it then because we want people to know how much control we have. We try to organize our lives as we please but we can’t because the limitations that people have on what will happen in fate are almost there but so is my fate.

Oedipus tries his best not to kill his parents, but he does not know who his real parents are. Nothing but a lot of things happen in our lives that we are not prepared for a long time. For example, if we give any test, we have to think about whether the test is good or bad.

We can’t really say what the result will be after taking the test because the test result may be good or bad but before taking the test, we know that there was preparation for our test, and depending on how we gave the test during the test we Result and fate works just like the test results but if for some reason I can’t pass the test or have an accident we have no control over it.

End

Also, read: Contribution of Socrates and evaluation on his death

by Md. Rabby Sharif Ador

Refrains and sources