Fate: The Cause of Oedipus' Downfall

Bryson Townsend

Dr. J.K. Tarpley

English 1302.61004

20 April 2015

Fate: The Cause of Oedipus’s Downfall

Section I: Introduction, Background, and Definitions

1.1 Introduction

Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson is a retired is a retired American football player, broadcaster and actor. He then played professionally in the National Football League (NFL) as a running back for 11 seasons, with the Buffalo Bills from 1969 to 1977 and with the San Francisco 49ers from 1978 to 1979. Simpson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. However, after being acquitted of the 1994 murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman after a lengthy and internationally publicized criminal trial, the People v. Simpson; he has been constantly scrutinized for writing the book If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, a book that puts forth a "hypothetical" description of the murders. He is currently serving a 33 year sentence for charges including but not limited to armed robbery and kidnapping that happened in 2007. To this moment, people are trying to understand what led O.J. Simpson to tragedy.

However, this isn’t the first time the world has been faced with the confusion of understanding the cause of the downfall of a great individual. For the past 2,000+ years, readers of Sophocles Oedipus Rex have been attempting to find the true reason why great people like Oedipus Rex go from triumph to tragedy. Although many readers argue that what causes Oedipus’s downfall was hamartia or free will, fate causes his tragedy.

1.2 Background

Oedipus Rex is a play that has been met with controversy for over 2,000 years. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus unknowingly fulfills a prophecy that claimed that he would commit incest and parricide. Readers debate about whether hamartia, fate, or free will is the cause of Oedipus’s downfall. Due to the age of the play, there have been many differences regarding interpretations of Oedipus Rex.

In his article “Oedipus: The Theban story and its interpretation”, Andrew Wilson states that there are a number a versions of the myth, which differ in important details - but the starting point must be the story as told by Sophocles in Oedipus Tyrannus (King Oedipus) performed in Athens for the first time in about 425 BC. 425 BC was thousands of years ago and some of the ideas from that time don’t translate well to the 21st century.

The play’s pagan religion, with its many gods and its belief in oracles also makes it more complicated for the modern audience. One controversy concerns the reason for Oedipus’s downfall, and most readers argue for one of three theories: free will, fate, or hamartia. The first theory on the cause of Oedipus’s downfall is free will. The second theory readers believe to be the cause of Oedipus’s downfall is fate. The third theory believed to be the cause of Oedipus’s downfall is hamartia, which is the Greek word, meaning mistake or error.

1.3 Definition of Key Terms

In his work “Fate and Ambiguity in Oedipus the King,” Stelious Ramfos defines fate as “the unknown frontier between mind and action, a hidden higher will that paralyzes thought” (5). Ramfos continues by stating that “According to Sophocles there is a spiritual reality that precedes sensory images, a thought that precedes thought” (5). He continues by stating that, “the gods decide without keeping us in total ignorance” (5) and that “the gods are everywhere around us; there is no room for our own will” (6).

In “Oracles and Dramaturgy,” Gordon M. Kirkwood explains three kinds of oracles common to Sophocles plays. The understanding of oracles compliments the understanding of fate. Oedipus Rex includes two of the three kinds of oracles. The first appears in the beginning segments of the play when Creon returns from Apollo with advice to kill the man who murdered Laius (Sophocles 4-5). The second oracle is given to Oedipus in his youth from Apollo, which declares what will happen in the future (Sophocles 18-19).

A reader must also understand the meaning of hamartia. Aristotle first defines hamartia in the thirteenth chapter of The Poetics. He defines hamartia as “some mistake” (77). E. R. Dodds, in his book Greece and Rome, classified hamartia as “sometimes applied to false moral judgments, sometimes to purely intellectual error,” putting him in accordance with Aristotle.

Lastly, the reader must understand the concept of free will and determinism. According to the Oxford Dictionary, determinism is