Oedipus: Fate Is Unavoidable

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as long as his father was still
alive and he was married to a woman not even related to his mother, he would not
bear the offspring that ³men would shudder to look upon.² It was the epitome of
irony for Oedipus to know his fate, and try to avoid it with the ³knowledge²
that he had obtained: "My father was Polybus of Corinth, my mother the Dorian
Merope, and I was held the foremost man in all that town until a thing happened-
-a thing to startle a man, though not to make him angry as it made me. We were
sitting at the table, and a man who had drunk too much cried out that I was not
my father¹s son--and I, though angry, restrained my anger for that day; but the
next day went to my father and my mother and questioned them. They were
indignant at the taunt and that comforted me--and yet the man¹s words
rankled...I sought where I might escape those infamous things--the doom that was
laid upon me."
When Oedipus fled from his parents, he started the chain reaction of
ironic happenstance ...

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