What issues does oedipus king address?

In
his fifth-century BCE tragic play ,explores issues of free will, fate, and
the consequences of intentional ignorance.

At the appearance in the play of
's wife, , the audience learns the prophecy of Oedipus's fate that relates to the death of her
husband, Laius, the former King of Thebes. It's very likely that most of the people who attended
the performance of Oedipus Rex at the Festival of Dionysus in 429 BCE
already knew the story of the play from the Oedipus myths and legends they had heard from
childhood, but Jocasta repeats it for dramatic purposes, and for later audiences unfamiliar with
the story..

JOCASTA. An oracle
Once came to Laius
... declaring he was doomed
To perish by the hand of his own son,
A child that
should be born to him by me. ...
As for the child, it was but three days
old,
When Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned
Together, gave it to be cast
away
By others on the trackless mountain side.
So then Apollo brought it not
to pass
The child should be his father's murderer,
Or the dread terror find
accomplishment,
And Laius be slain by his own son.

Oedipus cannot escape or in any way change his predetermined fate. No matter what he or
anybody else does, Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother, and
he did.

King Laius, Oedipus's father, was far more concerned with his own
life that with Oedipus's life when he ordered a shepherd to take the baby Oedipus into the
mountains and leave him there to die. Laius's actions didn't alter Oedipus's fate in any
way.

When Oedipus heard the same prophecy from the Oracle when he was living
as the son of King Polybus and Queen Merope in Corinth after being saved from death in the
mountains, he decided not to return home to Corinth in order to avoid the prophecy.
Nevertheless, Oedipus fulfilled the prophecy when he killed Laius on his way from the Oracle to
Thebes.

Free will seems to exist in the ancient Greek world to the extent
that the day-to-day decisions that a character like Oedipus makes are essentially unimportant
and inconsequential. The gods are far more concerned with the major, life-changing events in
Oedipus's life. They have better things to do than decide what Oedipus is going to have for
breakfast or which sandals he's going to wear.

Laius and Oedipus can do
whatever they choose to try to avoid Oedipus's fate, but their free-will choices to avoid
Oedipus's fate don't make any difference.

Sophocles also explores the
consequences of intentional ignorance. At the opening of the play, Oedipus is truly ignorant of
some important events in his life - being taken to the mountains to die, being adopted by
Polybus and Merope - and he's also ignorant of the importance of events of which he is
aware.

As the play continues, and as facts and circumstances begin to point
to Oedipus as Laius's murderer, Oedipus becomes resistant to this new knowledge, and closes his
mind to it. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, Oedipus repeatedly denies that he is the
man who killed Laius and thrust Thebes into the depths of blight and plague. The facts are
there, but Oedipus refuses to acknowledge or accept them.

There's no
immediate consequence of this intentional ignorance for Oedipus himself - he'll eventually come
to know and accept the truth of the matter - but the consequence for the people of Thebes is
that their suffering due to the blight and plague is unnecessarily prolonged.

Oedipus is enabled in his intentional ignorance by Jocasta. Early in the play,tells
Oedipus that Laius was murdered by a band of robbers.

CREON. Robbers, he [the survivor] told us, not one bandit but
A troop of
knaves, attacked and murdered him.

In the same speech
cited above, Jocasta refers to the report of the survivor of Oedipus's deadly encounter with
Laius that "so at least report affirmed," Laius "Was murdered on a day by
highwaymen."

Later in the same scene she reinforces this
point.

OEDIPUS. In thy report of what
thesaid
Laius was slain by robbers; now if he
Still speaks of robbers, not a
robber, I
Slew him not; "one" with "many" cannot
square.
But if he says one lonely wayfarer,
The last link wanting to my guilt
is forged.

JOCASTA. Well, rest assured, his tale ran thus at
first,
Nor can he now retract what then he said;
Not I alone but all our
townsfolk heard it.

Eventually, Oedipus and Jocasta
suffer the consequences of their intentional ignorance. Jocasta kills herself in shame and
grief, and Oedipus blinds himself with the gold pins in Jocasta's robe when he discovers her
body.