Was Oedipus doomed by fate, or did he choose his own downfall?

Scholars still argue about it, and the play itself leaves room for both answers. One influential reading, drawing on E. R. Dodds, says free will and predestination are by no means mutually exclusive, and this is so with Oedipus. On this reading, the oracle in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is a self-fulfilling prophecy: it inspires a series of choices, freely made by Oedipus, which lead him to kill his father and marry his mother.

The play follows his search for the murderer of King Laius, to end a plague on Thebes, unaware that the killer is himself. At the end, once the truth comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus gouges out his own eyes in despair.

The tragedy lies in how he gets there. Oedipus begins as self-confident, intelligent and strong-willed, and by the end it is within these traits that he finds his demise. He sees clearly and is blind to the truth about his origins, while the blind prophet Tiresias "sees" it.

The Athenian audience already knew the myth while Oedipus does not.

Not everyone reads it as a story of individual choice. The scholar Smith argues that Sophocles made Laius's oracle unconditional, removing culpability from Oedipus; other scholars argue the oracle was conditional, and thus avoidable.