This study will discuss the role of the gods in the tragedy of Oedipus, the protagonist in Sophocles' play Oedipus the King. The study will argue that although the gods certainly play a major role in the unfolding of actions and events in the play and in the life of Oedipus, the play loses all its meaning if we see the gods entirely in charge of everything that occurs in the play. The argument will be, then, that the gods neither completely knew the future, nor completely controlled at least Oedipus' internal destiny. Oedipus had to have had some measure of freedom, of attitude if not of action, for the tale to be anything but a claim that the gods are savage sadists. And such a claim does not seem to fit with the author's obvious compassion and pity for his protagonist. If Sophocles meant to stir nothing but our own sadism, our own god-like cruelty, then he would have done so. The mere fact that he shows Oedipus as at least a partially sympathetic character shows that he himself is a man of sympathy and that he would not be surprised to find sympathy, or pity or compassion, in his audience as well. And, if the gods who made us were utterly cruel and sadistic, with no sympathetic sensibility themselves, how did the playwright and his audience come to have such tender and sorrowful feelings? The answer must be that we have at least the freedom to choose responses to the consequences of our actions, even if we seem to be at the mercy of the gods with respect to those actions.
The argument here is that Oedipus is dramatically changed by his discovery of his past and his actions and the present consequences of those actions. We might argue that the changes he has undergone---humility, self-mutilation, self-exile---are themselves dictates of the gods, but if we choose to do so we kill all meaning in the play and in life. For this play and life to have meaning, the characters and we must have some degree of freedom to choose between opt...