The concept of destiny in Oedipus RexFor the first reader of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex, it seems that the gods completely dominate humanity. . This essay will seek to show that this is not the case because the presence of a tragic flaw in the protagonist turns out to be the cause of his downfall. In the opening scene of the tragedy, the priest of Zeus details for the king what the gods I have done to the inhabitants of Thebes: A plague is on our harvest even to the ear, A plague on the flocks that graze, A scourge on women in labor; and, armed with his flaming torch, the plague god has fallen upon our city, emptying the house of Cadmus, and the dark kingdom of Pluto is filled with groans and tears. The power of the gods seems quite impressive in their ability to inflict grievous wounds like these. on the population. King Oedipus, seeing Creon returning from the oracle at Delphi, addresses a brief prayer to King Apollo as the ultimate source of assistance in times of trial: “O King Apollo! may his joyful looks be omens of the joyful news he brings! Creon brings to Thebes the message from the gods of the oracle: “Let me then report everything that the god has declared. /King Phoebus orders us to eradicate purely and simply /A devastated pollution which infests the earth, /And to no longer harbor an inveterate wound. » The gods know that Oedipus is a “pollution”, a “plague” that must be gotten rid of, expelled. of Thebes. Charles Segal in Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge supports this view: In his growing strength, Oedipus begins to act as the ritual scapegoat, the pharmakos, the figure who is ritually in charge of everything..... . middle of paper ......s Rex, edited by Michael J. O'Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Segal, Charles. Oedipus Tyrannus: tragic heroism and the limits of knowledge. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. “Sophocles” in Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984. Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Trans. by F. Storr. no page.http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed new?tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0&id=SopOedi-- Spengler, Oswald. “Tragedy: classic versus western.” In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Van Nortwick, Thomas. Oedipus: the meaning of a masculine life. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.