Who is to blame for the fate that befalls Oedipus?
Topic: Who is to blame for the fate that befalls Oedipus?– Oedipus, Jocasta, Creon, Teiresias, and/or Fate. Choose and argue for one, two, or all involved with the action of the play and justify your position with evidence from the play. Use secondary sources to strengthen your argument.
Oedipus blames himself for the “dreadful curse that trouble[s]” him, because it appears that events he was involved in led directly to Laius’s death: “I may have just set myself under a dreadful curse without my knowledge!” (line 893–894). If this is true then fate had nothing to do with the murder of Laius.
It is important to note that Apollo made the prophecy to King Laius, Jocasta’s former husband, and Jocasta, Oedipus’s wife, that they would bear a son who would kill King Laius, and Apollo made the prophecy to Oedipus that he would kill his biological father and sleep with his biological mother.
It might be hard to believe that gods can have humanistic traits, but in fact they do. … By controlling fate, the gods carry all the responsibility of Oedipus in killing his father and marrying his mother. They are the only ones who can control fate, and thus they are the only ones to blame for what happened to Oedipus.
In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus blames the god Apollo for his fate, though he says that he alone is responsible for his reaction in blinding himself, which he does not regret.