ions of attitude and even action.
Specifically, Oedipus seems to have been doomed to kill his father and marry his mother. These events were decreed by the gods before he was born. His parents tried to abort that prophecy by leaving him for dead as an infant, but the fact that they failed to kill him seems to prove that what the gods foretell will indeed come to pass.
Clearly, the role of the gods in this play is to force Oedipus into situations in which he must take action which will lead him to the awareness that there is a greater power at work in the world than that of his own merely human power. As it is, at the start of the play, it would not be unfair to see Oedipus as a man who essentially sees himself as a god, or at least a god-like man. He refers to himself as "I, Oedipus, a name that all men know" (1083). The first character to address him says "You, Oedipus, who hold the power here" (1083).
The gods involvement in the lives of human beings in this play must be for the purpose of communicating with them and
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