Oedipus Rex

Man controls his fate by the choices that he makes. In being able to chose what his own actions are, fate is a result of his decisions. In Oedipus the King, the Greek writer, Sophocles, uses characterization and dramatic irony to project a theme throughout the play providing the idea that man is responsible for his own fate.

Sophocles lived 90 years, revealing a plethora of amazing, prize-winning tragic Greek plays. Sophocles was born near Athens in 496 BC, in the town of Colonus. He received the first prize for tragic drama over Aeschylus at the play competition held in 468. He wrote well over one hundred plays for Athenian theatres, and won approximately twenty-four contests. Only seven of his plays, however, have survived intact. From the fragments remaining, and from references to lost plays in other works, scholars have discovered that Sophocles wrote on an enormous variety of topics, and introduced several key innovations such as the man’s responsibilities for his own actions and how with that, he controls his own fate.