The role of Jocasta in Oedipus the King is crucial. Jocasta sees the reality of the situation

In the story of Oedipus the king at the beginning Jocasta does not have any idea of what her husband it is to her. Later on she finds out that her husband it is her own son whom she throw away because when he is born a bad prophecy is giving to him. She tries to stop him when she realize it and she starts begging him, she tries to stop him. As an example, she says to him, “listen to me, I beg you: do not do this thing!”(Sophocles 1088) Also she says “you are fatally wrong! May you never learn who you are!” (Sophocles 1088), that gives us a clue, at that point she knows Oedipus is her own son and that the prophecy has already begin to happen in his life. The journalist Anders

Oedipus’ actions are all fated together. Jokasta, Oedipus’ wife, widow of King Laios, calms Oedipus and tells him not to worry about Tireasias’ prophecy. She tells Oedipus that prophecies are not always accurate and fate does not exist. Jokasta tells him, “A long time back, an oracle reached Laios- / … / It said that Laios was destined to die / at the hand of a son born to him and me.” She continues, “Laios pinned its ankle joints together, / … / That time Apollo failed to make Laios die” (726). Laios was fated to be killed by his own son; instead, he was killed by bandits where the three roads meet. So the prophecy was false. Jokasta’s words hits Oedipus. Oedipus’ ankles were injured since birth. At a young age, an oracle tells Oedipus that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother, he ran away to Thebes, without knowing his parents are not his biological parents. The intersection of the three paths was where he killed in self defense when he ran away from home. Oedipus’ choice was to run away thinking it’ll prevent the prophecy. But because of his actions, he killed his

Often the past will present answers to questions about the future as well as questions of the now, and in Oedipus Rex, Oedipus’ past plays an integral role in his pursuit of righting the wrongs that are affecting him in the present. In the play, Oedipus must identify who has killed Laius in order to exile them to solve the qualms of his people, and in a dialogue with Jocasta, who happens to be his wife as well as his mother, she reveals to him details of the death of Laius that seem far too familiar for his comfort (Sophocles 27). This revelation of information acts as a catalyst that forces Oedipus to make the connection between his past and what Jocasta is telling him. This realization that he may have been responsible for Laius’ death exposes him to the weight of the pursuit of justice sometimes hold for humans. Through this dialogue, Oedipus comes to fear that he is the culprit of the scandal that is plaguing the situation, thus putting him in the position of a criminal who will face the due punishment for the crime. This internal conflict that Oedipus experiences creates and

Oedipus, outraged at the accusation, denounces it as a plot of Creon to gain the throne. Jocasta appears just in time to avoid a battle between the two men. Seers, she assures Oedipus, are not infallible. To prove her point she cites the old prophecy that her son should kill his father and have children by his mother. She prevented its fulfillment, she confesses, by abandoning their infant son in the mountains. As for Laius, he had been killed by robber’s years later at the junction of three roads on the route to Delphi.

Jocasta is forced out of denial and commits suicide at the same time that Oedipus discovers the truth. She feels so guilty for her despicable actions which could not alter the prophecy’s course and for her incestuous sins that she takes her own life to end the suffering.

God help you! God keep you from the knowledge of who you are” (57 Sophocles). Jocasta pleads to Oedipus not to pursue any more knowledge because she fears the worst days of her son will soon arrive if he continues. Jocasta’s lunacy after she perceives the truth causes her to complete the truth because she commits suicide. Oedipus is held responsible for Jocasta’s death because his persistence to find out the truth about himself has caused his mother to become so wretched that she kills herself in misery. Oedipus’s ignorance is clearly evident throughout the novel because many people have known his life story, and as a result made gruesome decisions.

When she was told her prophecy, which stated her newborn son is going to kill his own father and lie with her, she tried to go against her prophecy and ultimately abandon her son. She also proved herself ignorant when she said “Why should man fear since chance is all in all for hum, and he can clearly foreknow nothing? Best to live lightly, as on can, unthinkingly.”. When it was brought to Oedipus’s attention that the father that he grew up with passed away, he had a sense of relief that part of the prophecy he was told didn’t become true, but he still had fear that what the Oracle said may become true, Jocasta tells him that it is better for him to live without thinking about what the Oracle said. When the messenger tells Oedipus that his parents who he thought weren’t his real parents and that his parents abandoned him, Jocasta upon hearing this figures out Oedipus’s real identity and says “I beg you – do not hunt this out – I beg you. If you have any care for your own life. What I am suffering is enough… Oh Oedipus, God help you! God keep you from the knowledge of who you are!”. In Oedipus’s case, Ellison’s quote applies in a differing way, because Jocasta tells Oedipus to stop searching for the truth about his identity because he is better off living unaware of his

Oedipus rises as a hero, but eventually loses his power when he faithfully commits to terrible deeds. Jocasta, the wife and mother to Oedipus, doubts that the oracle of Apollo is genuine. Since she and her previous husband, King Laius, left Oedipus to die in the mountains, they refuse to believe the oracle. She claims that “ ..It was fate that he should die a victim at the hands of his own son, a son to be born of Laius and me. But, see now, he, the king, was killed by foreign highway robbers at a place where three roads meet” (Sophocles, 493: 791-796). Despite Jocasta and Laius’s intentions to change their fate, the prophecy remains unfeigned. The fact that Oedipus is alive even after being abandoned, is evidence that their fates are

In Oedipus the King by Sophocles the mother Jocasta spent years married to her biological son, and bore his children. The play was written as a Greek tragedy in which the characters have a fatal flaw, and this applies to Jocasta. Right after King Laius and Queen Jocasta have their son Oedipus they receive startling news from the Oracle in which it is predicted that one day their son will rise up to kill his father, then marry and sleep with his mother. In order to avoid this King Laius decided to kill their son, and Jocasta willingly agrees. After years pass by, King Laius gets killed by a passerby, Jocasta is to marry the riddle solver, and life continues as normal. Almost all at once Jocasta’s life shatters, she finds out that her husband was killed by her son, she married her

But unlike Oedipus, Jocasta handles her situation through hypocrisy and denial. As the play progresses, it becomes obvious that Jocasta is terrified of the idea that her life is influenced by the gods. Instead, she forces herself to believe that “life is governed by the operations of chance. Nothing can be clearly foreseen. The best way to live is by hit or miss, as best you can” (53). Jocasta’s life best resembles a balance, with the evidence to support the prophecies on one side and how much she can ignore on the other. She convinces herself that prophetic power does not exist, yet attempted to avoid the prophecy of Laius’ death by sending their child into the mountains. When Laius died, Jocasta reasoned that it was due to chance, thus proving the prophecy wrong. But the moment the Corinthian messenger revealed where he found Oedipus as a baby, Jocasta’s balance tipped. Not even Jocasta, who could ignore Oedipus’ injuries to his ankle and the meaning of his name, could overlook the proof. In her desperation to retain control of her life, Jocasta begs Oedipus to not interrogate the shepherd, and when he refuses, she takes her own life. Ultimately, Jocasta is revealed as a character who would do anything to avoid the truth. When the prophecies came to fruition, Jocasta realizes that she never had any control over her life. Unlike Oedipus, Jocasta refuses to accept her fate, and in her final act of defiance, an act she deems as her own, she commits

At first glance, it was exciting to see a woman dominate that severely in a man's world; but much like Lady Macbeth, all Jocasta had were her tough edges and a hunger for whatever power her family could get. When Oedipus presented her with the soothsayer's report about how he killed his father and will inevitably bed his mother- keep in mind, Jocasta knew this was all true- she put so much effort into making Oedipus believe that this wasn't true and that it was impossible (Sophocles 38). Later on when Oedipus found out Jocasta was his own mother, Jocasta later killed herself before she had to face responsibility for her actions to more than just Oedipus and his men. (Sophocles

In the establishment of the play, Jocasta and Oedipus seem as though they are a traditional royal husband and wife, with ordinary children. They love each other, unaware of the truth. Jocasta illustrates what she did to her son as a consequence of an incestual and sinful prophecy that her son would someday kill Laius and marry her, as told by an oracle. She reveals that she and Laius fastened their son’s ankles and left him on a mountain to die. She declares, “[...] My baby / no more murdered his father than Laius suffered -- / his wildest fear -- death at his own son’s hands” (794-796). While both

One moment, Oedipus is brimming with hope; the next, he’s sure that he is the killer of his father, King Laius. Every time Oedipus thinks that it can’t possibly be him, evidence proves otherwise. His wife, Jocasta, attempts to prove his innocence but “lets out part of the dire secret by her allusion to the ‘triple crossroads’” (Haigh). By attempting to assist Oedipus, she

The most crucial point in the play “Oedipus the king” was the fact that Oedipus was completely unaware that he killed his own father. He had a mission to find out who was his father’s killer. Effectively the more Oedipus was motivated and with his excessive confidence in knowing the truth of who killed his father, the play began to unravel and starts to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle that Oedipus was known for figuring out. The more he pushed in finding who his father killer was the more he was towards his reality of terror. The place where three roads meet was the place where Laius was killed and the place where Oedipus, himself had killed a man. He thought his father was a man named Polypus, the king of Corinth yet a man had shouted out at a banquet that he was not his father’s son. He was given a apprehension of “a future great with pain, terror, disaster…You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children

In order to discuss the issues at hand, we need to assess the degree of free will that an individual has when there is gods ruling over them. The characters who tried to avoid the oracles did not realize their limits as humans; they listened to their egos and perhaps believed their choices were in their hands rather than the hands of the gods and fate. Oedipus and Laius tried to prevent the prophecy that the oracle presented them with, and in doing