At first, Oedipus Rex seems to be an unambiguous statement on whether human beings are at the mercy of fate or whether they have the free will to direct their own lives. Oedipus does everything he can to avoid the fate Apollo has warned him of, but all to no avail: Destiny sniffs him out and destroys him.

However, the question of fate doesn’t seem to be an open-and-shut case. As Oedipus puts it when he describes his blinding, just because a god has decreed something doesn’t mean that Oedipus is not responsible for his actions:

Apollo, friends, Apollo—

he ordained my agonies—these, my pains on pains!

But the hand that struck my eyes was mine,

mine alone—no one else—

I did it all myself! (241)

Adding to this doubling, though Oedipus endlessly pursues answers even when people are begging him not to, he has a history of not following up on some important questions, like whether Polybus is his biological father, when they first arise.

While the Apollonian prophecies all come true, the play doesn’t go so far as to dust its hands and say, everything that happens was fated to happen, so everyone can just do whatever they most feel like.