Every Fate Has Irony

If you were given a horrible fate, you would want to do everything you could to try to avoid it, right? In Oedipus the King by Sophocles in 5th century B.C., Oedipus is given the fate that he will kill his own father and take his mother’s hand in marriage. His parents are worried by this fate and decide to get rid of Oedipus to avoid his fate. Oedipus is given to a messenger to go far away from the city and to kill Oedipus but in the end, Oedipus survives and his fate comes true. Oedipus’ entire life is built around irony where every person he speaks to in the play knows something about the truth of his life that either he doesn’t yet know or that he isn’t willing to accept as it scares him to even think of it to be true.

The main irony is that Oedipus ran away from who he thought were his parents, to avoid the same fate that was given to him as a baby, that was told when he was old enough to know. Oedipus’ parents Laius and Jocasta tried to get rid of Oedipus when they learned of his fate but they failed to do so, Oedipus was then raised by a different family in a different city. Oedipus was given the same fate as he was given in Thebes, so to avoid killing who he thought was his father and marrying his mother, he chose to run away. On his way to Thebes the city, he tried to start his new life, but he encountered a carriage and ended up killing all but one of the men inside. Outside the carriage, one of the dead men was his father, Laius. “You said that he spoke of highway robbers who killed Laius. Now if he uses the same number, it was not I who killed him. One man cannot be the same as many. But if he speaks of a man travelling alone, then clearly the burden of the guilt inclines toward me.”(p. 497 line 938) In the end of the story Oedipus finds out that he himself truly is the murderer of his father, the husband of his mother and the brother to his own children.

The second ironic relationship between Oedipus and Creon is that while Oedipus believes that Creon is simply his wife’s brother,—his brother in law—he is also technically Oedipus’ uncle. This relationship with Creon is ironic from the start of when Oedipus came back to the city and married Creon’s sister; Jocasta. At the beginning, Creon explains to Oedipus the plague that has come over the city and that to cure the plague and save the people, the murderer of Laius must be discovered. Oedipus declares to Creon and the people of Thebes; “Upon the murderer I invoke this curse—whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many—may he wear out his life in

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