Oedipus the King

Oedipus the King is different from The Odyssey, because Oedipus and Jocasta express their lack of trust and faith in the prophet Tiresias from the start; they don’t trust a spiritual man that may very well be relaying a direct message from God(s).

Reading Oedipus the first time around, I thought that this was a Greek Tragedy where the characters had free will without any intervention from God(s). But nothing could be further from the truth.

The intervention of the Gods, from the very beginning of the story, is so clear to me now that I am reading Oedipus the second time around. Of course it’s Oedipus who the citizens ask to take action and of course it ends up being him who has plagued the city. God(s) is already intervening here, delegating it for it to be Oedipus, the actual murder, to solve the murder.

God(s) intervention unravels and starts to constantly show itself after Tiresias tells Oedipus that he is the murderer that he’s been looking for. Jocasta denies the prophecy as well, but the explanation of Laius’ murder sounds familiar to Oedipus.

All of this goes to show that even in this Greek tragedy–the characters don’t have free will. They only believe to. Oedipus’ fate was already set in stone the moment he was born. Tiresias delivered the message but it was decades too late.