Comparing Oedipus Free Will In Romeo And Juliet

However, in his attempts to escape the prophecy, Oedipus ran straight to it. At the time, he was unaware that he had been adopted. Instead of escaping his fate, Oedipus met Laius on the road and murdered him and four of his escorts out of anger and self-defense. This was the first event, though not actually shown in the play, that set Oedipus’s destiny into motion.

In the beginning of the story, Oedipus is very taken back by the situation. He will not accept the truth of his fate and accuses Tiresias of lying to him so Oedipus’s bother- in- law, Creon, could take the throne. Oedipus is extremely dumbfounded by this news because he had no knowledge of killing his father or marrying his mother, but what he learns later is that who he thought were his parents were not his real parents. When he finally realizes that he did in fact marry his own mother and kill his father, he accepts it and punishes himself in order to uphold his promise to his people. By this point there is no way Oedipus can escape his fate. Tiresias says to Oedipus, “No man in the world can make the gods do more than the gods will” (811). Since he did kill his father, the previous king, Oedipus has to be shunned by all of Thebes. Because there is no way of changing his fate, he accepts his responsibilities by giving himself the punishment he assigned to the murderer of Laius.

Oedipus the King by Sophocles is the story of a man who was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. The story continues in the tradition of classic Greek plays, which were based upon the Greeks’ beliefs at the time. The ancient Greeks believed that their gods decided what would ultimately happen to each and every person. Since those gods destined Oedipus to kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus’ life was definitely fated. However, the gods only decided where Oedipus’ life would eventually lead; they never planned the route he would take to get there. All the decisions that Oedipus made in order to fulfill his destiny, and the decisions he made after the fact, were of his own free will,

As Oedipus was born into royalty, he started his life in a condemned manner. At only a few days old, Oedipus’ family tried to stop the prophecy that was given by the oracle. Clearly worried about the message, the King took matters into his own hands trying to stop a per-determined fate. “He wasn’t three days old and the boy’s father fastened

Throughout the story, the audiences most obvious prediction is for Oedipus to stick to what he said, and get rid of King Laius murderer, who was not expected to be Oedipus. The irony in this situation is when the audience finds out the truth that Oedipus was the killer, because it is the opposite of what you expected. The fate in this example is that fate led Oedipus to being the killer. Lastly, Oedipus runs away from his “parents” so he wouldn’t kill his father, but that ended up leading him to his real father and killing him. In trying to avoid fate, Oedipus still fulfills Apollo’s prophecy.

As humans, we´re gifted with free will to use our thoughts, words, and actions in order to create the life we desire. Free will can be greatly seen in timeless plays such as The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, and Pyramus and Thisbe, by Ovid. Both plays share similar plots, lovers who individually guide themselves to death with impulsive immaturity, and demonstrate how ignorance affects more than just their own lives. Though their misfortunes could be linked to fate, I believe that fate is just an idea and sometimes even an excuse created to explain choices and occurrences. To start off, the actions some characters in the play chose to make greatly impacted and encouraged Romeo and Juliets’ and Pyramus and

First, the outcome of the play “Romeo and Juliet” was due to free will because of choices made by Friar Laurence. The first decision he made was shortly after Romeo meets Juliet, Romeo asks the friar to wed them and he answers with, “In one respect I’ll thy assistant be,” (2.3.94) In hopes of ending the feud between Montagues and Capulets, the friar chose to help marry Romeo, a decision that would result in the deaths of the main characters. If he had refused to help, Romeo would not have married to Juliet, slain Tybalt, or killed himself as Juliet would not have had to fake her death. The second decision made by the friar was after the climax of the play, where Juliet asks for his help when her parents demanded she marry Paris and he responds

The wildcard factors are to be blamed the most for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet due to fate. This is because a divine power and/or unchangeable sequence of events that happened to the characters caused the unlikely outcome of the lovers. While the characters in the play still had free will, any actions that they did would have still led to the guaranteed conclusion of the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. For example, after Juliet meets Romeo at the Capulet ball, she says: “My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!”(1:5:140). This proves that while Romeo was a Montague, a person Juliet was supposed to hate, she falls in love anyway in a fateful manner. It is heavily implied that fate brought the two together, and that there

There are three prophecies mentioned in the play that say Oedipus will kill his father. The first, chronologically, is the prophecy Laios received before his son was born. It stated that if Laios had a son, then his son would be the death of him. Oedipus hears the second

In Romeo and Juliet I believe fate lead Romeo and Juliet to their death. Without fate they would’ve never met in the first play. There was a lot of bad luck in their relationship. They were also born into a family war. Therefore, fate was the cause of Romeo and Juliet.

Fate and free will are two topics that are often questionable because they go hand in hand. Fate is a belief that a certain event is said to happen, then that person's choice and free will lead them to what has been predicted as inevitable. Knowing whether something is fate’s fault or the fault of the person who’s going to enact the said action, is one question that has never been fully answered. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare's Macbeth, fate is determined by their own choices and free will, the character Macbeth knows of what lies ahead of him, making him alter the present to create his idealistic future, however instead he lives a life of ruins. As for Oedipus his entire actions are based on one prophecy he desperately

In Oedipus Rex there are prophets, like Teiresias, that could see the future. In Oedipus Rex, King Laius received a prophecy that he would have a son that would grow up to kill King Laius and marry his own mother. Despite efforts to prevent these prophecies from coming true by Laius, Iokaste, and Oedipus, they ultimately could not outrun fate. Teiresias said it best when he said:

how free-will can commence true love, while the poem discusses how free will can terminate true love. Obligation forces individuals to find true love because they can feel required to. In the TED talk article, true love is described to be significant and this makes the reader obligated to gain true love. It says, “ It is a need. It is an urge.

Laius' fate was told by an oracle Jocasta explains this to Oedipus when she says "There was an oracle once that came to Laius, — I will not say that it was Phoebus’ own, but it was from his servants— and it told him that it was fate that he should die a victim at the hands of his own son"; Jocasta goes on to say that the prediction was not true. In the end his actions did not change his fate nor did Oedipus' fate change

While he was leaving, he came to a crossroad. An altercation started between Oedipus and a group of men in the same location. In the end, Oedipus had killed everyone but one man who managed to escape. That man who escaped left town and became a Shepherd. Oedipus had the Shepherd brought to him for questioning. After the interrogation, Oedipus found out the Laius was included with the group of people he killed. With everything that has come out to Oedipus, he wishes that he would have died as a baby. He says, “Then I would not have come to kill my father and marry my mother infamously” (21). Oedipus sees that his fate and true and that his fate has come. He thought that getting away from Polybus (which he did not know was not his real father) would keep him from harming him when all he did was run into Laius (which he did not know was his real father) and killed him. Only completing his fate furthermore. Not to mention, in the beginning of the play, Oedipus was very full of himself. He believed that he was so greatest man in the world and the city of Thebes to be good again. He was told from Creon that, “The God commanded clearly: let someone punish with force this dead man’s murder” (2). He was convinced that to capture Laius’s murder, the town would be good again. He then announced to