Oedipus Rex

The inevitability of fate is on of the largest themes in Sophecles Oedipus Rex. Then entire story is a lesson on how it is impossible to cheat fate. This was a reocurring theme in Greek Myth. The ancient greeks believed that the gods more specifically the Fates decided the life of a person. This of course meant that people have very little free will. Through dramatic irony Sophecles shows it is impossible to defy fate. 

After learning that he will kill his father and marry mother (whom he believes to be Merope and Polybus of Corinth) Oedipus attempts to avoid his fate by fleeing from Corinth to Thebes. What Oedipus didn't know was that the Merope and Polybus were not his birth parents. His parents were Jocasta and Laius the king and queen of Thebes who left Oedipus exposed on the hill to die as a baby, having learned of the prophecy themselves. As fate would have it Oedipus runs into his farher Laius on the road to Thebes and in a fight murders the man never knowing his relation to the man. He moves to Thebes and marrys the newly widowed Jocasta, completeing the prophecy.
Oedipus had abseloutly no free will in this story. Or rather no control of his fate. All of the choices he made led exactly to the prophecy that Apollo and the fates had set up for him. The greeks would argue that the choices that Oedipus makes were pre-destined as well, no matter what he would make the decisons thay he did

To what extent do we have free will?

For my big question this year I decided to ask my question on how much free will a person really has. At first I was going to phrase to "Do we have free will?" but after the discussion we had in class I decided that free will worked more as a spectrum than a simple yes or no answer. There are a lot of things that can effect how much say we have in the choices we make, and a lot of things that effect how we make these choices.

I did a project on this several years ago for my American Literature Honors class Sophomore year, and although I put in a good amount of thought into answering this question there is just so much more on this topic to explore. I had another website created, that was super-duper pretty but unfortunately it got blocked by the school the school fire wall so I was forced to use blogger instead (a case for free will being limited perhaps). 

Although this blog will be probably consist of majority literary references as it is for a literature class I do want to include opinions from outside sources. I already have a good collection of them on my other  blog and will eventually add that information over as well as add new sources that I discover throughout the year.

I'm looking forward to exploring this age old question. Hopefully the stories we read with enlighten me to new ways of looking at the idea of free will and hopefully reading these discussions will enlighten you on this topic as well.