Predestined Fate Of Oedipus

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Term Paper Title	Predestined Fate Of Oedipus
# of Words	1066
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.26

Predestined Fate of Oedipus

Predestined Fate of Oedipus

     In ancient Greek society they believed that ones life is predestined and
that ones fate is sealed. What is meant to occur will happen no matter what that
person does. In "Oedipus Rex" Oedipus' fate is doomed from his birth because of
the actions of his ancestors. Unlike Oedipus most people today don't believe in
predestined fate. People can be all they want to be regardless of their
background or the circumstances of their lives. However some people don't
realize that they are in charge of their own live and can make conscience
decisions to change the course of their lives.
     One of Oedipus' ancestors committed a terrible act of rape some time ago.
This behavior obviously didn't please the gods and thus they punished Oedipus'
family for several generations. When Iocaste and Laios gave birth to Oedipus
they were aware of the prophecy that he would one day kill his father and then
marry his mother. With this in mind they tried to have Oedipus killed to avoid
this horrible fate. However they couldn't kill him themselves because murder of
their own son would get the gods angry all over again. So they tried to get some
one to take Oedipus out to the mountains and let him die of natural causes. Some
people might argue that they are still indirectly responsible for the death but
apparently the Greeks only considered it bad if you were directly responsible
for the act of murder. The problem is that this person never left Oedipus on the
mountains as he was instructed to and therefore Oedipus never died. So Iocaste
and laios go on living worry free thinking that they outsmarted the gods and
avoided their horrible fate, but it will catch up with them soon enough. They
can't change their fate, there is no way to avoid what the gods already decided
will happen. No matter what Iocaste and Laios tried to do to avoid their fate
the gods would do something to make sure that it didn't change their final fate.
     Many of us today would argue that this is very unfair. Oedipus didn't do
anything to deserve this type of punishment however he will pay for the crime of
his ancestors. And there is nothing that he can do to prevent this from
happening. He is basically cursed for life. His fate is sealed.
     Unlike Oedipus, we can change our fate. We can do what we want with our
lives. As our Army tells us, "Be all that you can be". There are more
opportunities than ever for us to promote our standard of living and increase
our ...

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