Free Will: the Cause of Oedipus's Downfall

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Ashton Woodard Free Will: The Cause of Oedipus’s Downfall 1.1 Introduction He was given strength by God to combat his enemies and perform heroic feats. However his attraction to untrustworthy women caused him to lose his way with God, therefore causes his downfall. What cause great men like Samson to fall? For more than two thousand years readers of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus have debated this question. Three of the most talked about theories include hamartia, free will, and fate. Although many critics support the fate and hamartia to be the causes of Oedipus’ downfall, free will best explains his tragedy. 1.1 Background The question of what causes Oedipus’s downfall in Sophocles Oedipus Rex has been surrounded by controversy for almost two-thousand years. In Oedipus Rex, not knowing his identity and not realizing the truth about his life, marrying his mother and killing his father, cause the downfall of Oedipus. In his essay, “The Guilt of Oedipus,” P. H. Vellacott explains how knowledge is what many readers have been using to analyze the difficulties in the play “which may after all be insoluble” (207). Vellacott sought to deal with some of these difficulties in the play. While many seem to create their own theories, the three main theories people believe that cause Oedipus’s downfall are hamartia, fate, and free will. People believe that hamartia is the main cause of Oedipus’s downfall because he created some type of mistake or error for himself. Others argue that free will, which has the capability to act at one’s own judgment, is the main cause of Oedipus’s downfall. 1.2 Definition of Key Terms To completely understand these theories, hamartia, fate, and free will, they will need to be defined to fully understand what has been argued. Aristotle, the founder of term hamartia, defines it as some sort of “mistake” (Aristotle 77).
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