Name: Hoang Phuong Mai

Student ID: 200172

OEDIPUS: THE FALLEN HERO OF ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDY

In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus suffered from a tragic ending as he accidentally killed

his father, slept with his mother, and eventually had to exile himself from Thebes. Despite his

efforts to resist the oracle about his fate, he failed to avoid what had been predicted, as if

everything was imposed on him by the wheels of fortune. However, whether or not his

destiny was determined by an external force, the underlying reasons for Oedipus’ downfall

were his over-reliance on emotions and rejection of rationality when formulating judgments

and arriving at important decisions, as well as his negligence in personal responsibility that

catalyzed a sequence of careless actions and aggravated his tragic ending.

First, Oedipus lacked rationality in the way he obtained knowledge and ended up making

uninformed decisions. This characteristic was evidenced by Oedipus’ reaction to the oracle

about his parents:

“When I learned this, I left Corinth at once,

making out my position by the stars

and getting as far away as I could to prevent

such terrible predictions from coming true.” (99)

When Oedipus learned of the oracle, he immediately ran away from Corinth without

assessing the likelihood of the oracle or considering other possibilities. The phrase “at once”

suggests how hasty the decision was made, which left him little time to contemplate on the
information he has just received or come up with other plans to evade the predictions. To

emphasize how thoughtless Oedipus’ reaction was, it should be taken into consideration that

before hearing the oracle, he had received a small hint about his birth parents:

“At dinner one night

a man got drunk and in his cups he said

I was not my father’s child.” (99)

Instead of amassing every information he has obtained and piecing them together to figure

out the truth, Oedipus disregarded the most crucial clue - the drunk man’s blabbering. More

ironically, it was this drunk man’s words that evoked Oedipus’ curiosity about his

background and drove him to hear the oracle in the first place. However, the shocking

predictions left him in a distressed mental state and even in terror, which could explain his

instantaneous decision. On the other hand, his reaction could show how certain Oedipus was

of his perceived reality that he did not bother to recheck it before making up his mind. No

matter what interpretation, Oedipus was not thinking critically or rationally when he decided

to run away. The careless manner in which he tried to evade the predictions has signified a

rejection of rationality, an essential quality on the path of acquiring knowledge. As Oedipus

could not profoundly and multilaterally examine knowledge and ask important questions, he

ended up overlooking the most important piece of information, which was his first step in

creating a sequence of actions that fulfilled the oracle of murdering his father and marrying

his mother.

After failing to inspect the prophecy thoroughly, Oedipus committed another fatal mistake

when he gave full rein to his emotions at critical moments and acted rashly without

considering the consequences. In his encounter with a man on the road who was supposed to
be his father Laius, Oedipus, unable to hold back his anger, killed the man and the whole

crew:

“[…] in my anger

I struck him, that driver who had blocked my way.” (99)

“[…] I struck him with it hard,

and he rolled out of the carriage, and I killed him

and all the others, too.” (100)

In the encounter, Oedipus attacked the driver for a very trivial reason - the driver “blocked

my [Oedipus’] way” (99). It was a minor conflict that could be resolved easily without any

need to resort to violence, yet Oedipus was so carried away with his bad temper that he

turned a small clash into a bloodbath in which both the man and the entire crew got killed.

Oedipus’ reactions have shown how he let emotions, especially anger, control the way he

thought and acted, as he created a scene out of the most trifling conflict. Moreover, the fact

that he had been forewarned about killing his father and marrying his mother underlines how

emotions guided his actions. Had he wished to avoid the oracle more resolutely, he should

have completely abstained from murder and marriage. By killing a random man who blocked

his road and massacring the whole crew, Oedipus risked the possibility of killing his father,

no matter how small that possibility was. To satisfy his tantrum, he did not consider the

likelihood of the few men he killed being his father. Therefore, Oedipus unconsciously turned

the fate he was trying to avoid into reality by giving in to the domination of his temper.

It is commonly believed that Oedipus should not be blamed for his actions, for he could never

have imagined that the unreliable words of a drunk man would turn out to be the truth, or that

the man he accidentally killed on the road would be Laius - his birth father. These
inexplicable coincidences may have enabled some slim possibilities to turn into reality;

however, Oedipus was never forced to do things against his wish or follow a single specific

path in any situations, which makes him the decisive force in controlling his life. Indeed, he

was given opportunities to decide on his reaction to surrounding events. He could have

examined the oracle more thoroughly, and having learned of the wicked prophecy, he should

have refrained from killing people, yet he still ended up making the wrong choice as a result

of imprudent consideration and poor emotional control skills. Oedipus’ careless actions

cannot be blamed on fate, since it was an innate flaw of his character, which gradually built

up to become a tragedy.

Oedipus’ carelessness stemmed from a deep-seated problem in his personality - the inability

to take responsibility for his own actions. As he figured out the truth at the end of the story,

he turned to the gods and fate to blame for his miserable situation:

“Apollo drove me to this, my friends, to these cruel torments.” (127)

With this lamentation, Oedipus attributed all previous occurrences to the gods’ doing and the

coincidental intertwining of external factors, thereby rejecting personal responsibility for the

suffering he endured. Even when he had found out the truth, he still failed to recognize that

his flawed choices drove him to that situation. By taking for granted the weight of his own

actions, he did not claim responsibility for the time he ran away without thorough

consideration, or the time he killed a random man on the street without fearing that might be

his father. Had Oedipus attained a more well-rounded perspective on surrounding events and

recognized the importance of his choices, he would have been more prudent in the

examination of knowledge and more self-restrained in his emotional response. Oedipus

irresponsible mindset did not only cause him to act recklessly and consequently fulfill the
oracle of being his mother’s husband and his father’s murderer, but it also exacerbated the

tragic ending:

“[...] it was my own two hands, 

my miserable hands that struck at my eyes.” (127)

After the tragedy had happened, Oedipus gouged out his eyes and exiled himself from

Thebes, which indicates a continuity of his irresponsible attitude. With the act of self-

destruction, he brought on himself further misery which neither redeemed his mistakes nor

improved the situation. Despite remaining alive, Oedipus chose to forsake his life and his

city, thus cut off the possibility to compensate for the aftermath he had caused to himself and

to other people. His irresponsibility drove the situation to a state of despair - a dark tunnel

with no light of hope in the end.

Regardless of the involvement of predetermined fate, after all, what ultimately led to the

tragedy was Oedipus’ flawed choices stemming from his rejection of rationality, his

dependence on emotions, and his dismissal of responsibility. By first refusing to examine the

oracle thoroughly before making crucial decisions, then murdering a group of people on an

impulse despite forewarnings, Oedipus eventually created his own fate that fulfilled the

prophecy. The sequence of careless actions could be ascribed to his irresponsible attitude,

which exacerbated the ending beyond predictions. Oedipus had always been given a choice to

fight back the curse that enshrouded his existence, but it was his defective decisions that

brought about a doomed destiny.