The True Antagonist In Oedipus The King

“Antagonist: One who contends with another in an athletic contest, a battle, or struggle for the mastery; an opponent, an adversary” (Merriam Webster). While the definition of an antagonist is simple, identifying antagonists in literary works can often be a challenge. Sometimes the antagonist is obvious, such as Nils Krogstad from The Doll’s House. Other times the protagonist is the villain while the antagonist is the hero, as Macbeth and Macduff in Macbeth. Furthermore, sometimes the antagonist is an abstract figure or idea, such as society in The Stranger. Such is the case in the Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles. In this play, while solving the mystery of the prior king’ murder, King Oedipus brings about his own doom in the process. Even though Oedipus leads himself to misery, the true antagonist of the play is fate because destiny itself played the biggest role of bringing agony to Oedipus and his family.
An antagonist is the one who is against the protagonist and always obstructs the actions and plans of the protagonist. In Oedipus Rex, when he finds out his future from Apollo, Oedipus runs away from Corinth in order to avoid his fate of killing his father and sleeping with his mother: “Hearing this I fled from Corinth…to a land where I would never fulfill the evil that the oracle forecast” (Sophocles Act 2 Page 10). However fate acted against Oedipus and he soon found out that his parents had adopted him as a child. In the play, Oedipus tries many times to avoid his destiny. However every time he tries to change his future, fate responds by strengthening the same future he wants to avoid. Thus by the definition, fate is the antagonist in Oedipus