The two most prominent themes included in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus The King, that are also major themes throughout Greek tragedies are fate and sight. Fate, described as unescapable, and sight, described as blindness vs. knowledge, both are incorporated into Sophocles’ play. The main character, Oedipus, is the king of Thebes and viewed as their savior against the sphinx. Oedipus the king, is one of the best known Greek plays, in my opinion, mainly because of Oedipus’ blindness to how his actions were making his fate come true. This particular play gives insight on the Greek concepts of fate and sight with the different prophecies told by an insightful yet blind prophet, Tiresias. Through many examples in this play, fate and sight are intertwined …show more content…
Throughout Greek plays, characters tend to reach out to the Gods or Prophets to get more insight into their lives and learn what is in their future. After hearing their prophecy, they tend to abandon what they have been told and think they can avoid it. Avoiding fate was a recurrent act made by Oedipus and his family. Learning the fate of their child, Laius and Jocasta, left their baby on a mountain side in hopes to prevent the fate given to their child from ever coming true. To their disbelief, their baby, Oedipus, is found and raised by a Shepard. Once Oedipus heard of his fate, he had left the family that found him, which he thought was his birth parents, in order to avoid his fate. Instead of running away from his fate, he ran into the direction he meant to avoid. Fate is the most complex concept in Greek plays, in different scenarios people can blame personal flaws or just the nature of the universe for the reason why fate is inevitable. This play gives off a universal belief that no matter what actions are taken in Greek tragedies; the prophecies are going to come true no matter what. Even though this is a shared belief, it does not stop characters in the play from thinking they can escape what was originally destined for