In Sophocles' play Oedipus the King, the roles of free will and fate in human life are questioned, and it seems that Sophocles took a direct view on the answer. One interpretation of the play suggests that Sophocles was pointing out to his fellow Greeks the reality of human free will. The question arises throughout the episodes of the play: is it fate or autonomous decision-making that determines the course of events in the world? the life of Oedipus? For the Greeks, one aspect of this argument was the idea that an individual's character greatly affected their destiny in life. Each individual's character has certain positive and negative attributes that affect the choices they make. For Oedipus, one of the attributes that affected his ultimate destination in life was his intense desire for knowledge and truth. One of the driving forces of the play is Oedipus' desperate attempt to discover the truth about his origin. He pushes Tiresias, Creon, Jocasta, the oracle, the messenger and the shepherd for information about his beginnings. Each of these characters refuses to give him at least a direct answer. Even as he gets closer to the answer and the others have long since put the pieces of the puzzle together, Oedipus pushes beyond the comfort level for the answer. He said, “I can’t stop now. Not with all my birth cues in my hands” (59). The desire for truth, so deeply rooted in his honest character, drove him to continue his search, which ultimately led to his downfall. He did, however, have the ability to put an end to this situation and made the independent decision to continue. Other cases in which Oedipus made choices directly relating to the prophecy were at points in the middle of the paper... ...essence, Jocasta and Laius were indirectly responsible for their own deaths, and Oedipus was responsible for its ruin. Oedipus even seems to admit his responsibility when he says: “What a claim to sincerity and confidence when all my past behavior has proven so erroneous” (75). In each of the examples mentioned above – in the attributes of the characters that led to individual choices and in the natural, autonomous choices made by the characters – it becomes evident that the events of the play were not predetermined at all. Instead, with a careful reading of the text, it can be interpreted that the choices made by the characters were made independently by each individual. With the text of Oedipus the King, Sophocles apparently made his fellow Greeks understand that humanity has the capacity, even with prophecies, to make choices free from the influence of divine forces..