"What will come will come." Individual agency is an illusion in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Discuss.

First performed during the Golden Age of Athens for an Athenian audience whose religious worldview upheld the absolute authority of the gods, Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King interrogates the intersection of divine will and mortal agency, examining the inevitability of prophetic decrees.¹ While the play seemingly affirms that human beings remain entirely powerless to escape the predetermined destiny orchestrated by the gods, it concurrently proposes that active mortal choices are fundamental in enacting such decrees.² Sophocles consequently challenges his classical audience to recognise the severe limitations of self-determination, illustrating that attempting to circumvent divine prophecy merely accelerates the destruction of those who elevate human intellect above religious piety.³

Sophocles initially presents human authority as a source of formidable self-determination, yet frames that confidence against a divine order that exposes the severe limitations of mortal control over destiny.⁴ The priest's conversation with Oedipus esteems him as the "greatest power"⁵, a title of duality, as it reveres the secular sovereignty of the "young hope of Thebes" while inoculating him with a near-divine potency, establishing the kleos the ruler so desperately commits to retain to validate his agency. However, in a request to "let us remember" victories and not "to fall once more", the tragedy encapsulates a hubristic propensity adopted by leaders of incessant concern over their capacity to dictate fate, exposing the illusion inherent with the human condition in a rise of power holding the inevitability of a subsequent fall. In doing so, the playwright reveals the catalyst of the fall to originate from a leader's inability to "raise up our city" and "set us on our feet", parallel to General Pericles' good-willed decision that brought about plague, highlighting a concurrent manifestation of internal deterioration of mortal agency and external collapse of a microcosm's trust in such self-determination. Hence, the drama intertwines the diction surrounding the glorification of Oedipus as a "saviour" of immense "zeal" and "action", emphasising the inherent temporality of his glory, while simultaneously laying the foundation for him to "let loose [with the] fury in [him]" out of paranoia, exposing the fragility of human agency. This exaltation of human capacity is then mirrored in the wider city, as the community's desperate surrender of its own choices to a singular ruler demonstrates the danger of elevating earthly power above divine will.⁶ Furthermore, with his declaration that he would be "blind to misery"⁷ to not pity the city "kneeling at [his] feet", the tragedy alludes to the dramatic irony of the king's self-perception as a paternal figure, believing his independent choices sit above the destiny of his people. As the Chorus of Theban elders relinquishes their democratic power in the parados by "kneeling" before their king, they signify their repudiation of the gods, bolstering his sense of entitlement and tyrannos acquired through his former glory in outwitting the mythical Sphinx. The playwright critiques such blind loyalty, leading to the destruction of Thebes as a "great army dying", the despairing imagery of "life on life goes down" stressing the city's decaying vitality when it mistakes mortal choice for genuine control over what is ordained. Through the public's adulation and the king's belief in his own sovereignty, Sophocles demonstrates that confidence in mortal agency remains a catastrophic illusion, leaving humanity defenceless against inescapable fate.⁸