Andrea Czarney
Mr. Conrad
English 11A
16 December 2013
The Downfall of Oedipus In the land of Thebes, King Laius and Queen Jocasta were granted the privilege to have a beautiful baby boy, but a prophecy of fate was told that the baby would grow old to kill his father and marry his mother. The Queen and King were shocked and decided that they could avoid the prophecy by pinning the baby’s ankles together and leaving the baby on a mountainside to die. They handed the baby to a shepherd to take him to the mountain, but the shepherd felt remorse for the child and handed him off to a messenger to take him as far away from Thebes as possible. The baby was brought to a town called Corinth, where he became the baby of the King and Queen and was from then on known as Oedipus. Years later on a late night, a drunken man had blurted something out. It was something that bothered Oedipus; something that he tried not to think about, but he could not forget. It was the prophecy that had once determined his death; it had come back to haunt him. He did not want to take his chances and left Corinth to later come across a group of men that he killed off. He arrived in Thebes and solved the riddle of the sphinx and became King. He married the Queen and had children as what was normal to do; but once again, the prophecy of his fate was said. He soon found out, that the prophecy was true, and gouged his eyes out and Jocasta killed herself due to embarrassment. In the play Oedipus Rex, by the Greek playwright Sophocles, Oedipus’s downfall was not his fault because other people’s actions lead to a life of unfortunate events. For starters, part of Oedipus’s downfall was due to Jocasta and Laius trying to avoid the prophecy. Early in the play, Jocasta said, “An oracle was reported to Laius once… that his doom would be death at the hands of his own son” (669-773). Jocasta is saying