While reading Oedipus the King it is hard not to think about the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. The Road Not Taken is all about making choices in your life that you may or may not want to make but there is no other way to go about it, you must make a decision. The poem describes roads that are available to go down but only one may be chosen and there is no turning around to change your original choice. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry that I could not travel both- Even if you think you may have chosen the right road to go down you may not realize it until the end that you have chosen the wrong one or from the beginning there was no choice at all and fate was played out as in Oedipus the King. .
In Oedipus the King, the curse that was put upon Oedipus was something that he tried to hide from and discourage from happening the best that he could. But unfortunately for Oedipus, he unconsciously chose to walk down the road he thought he would be avoiding. In this story it seems to be whether or not you truly believe in fate or if you believe in controlling your own future and what happens to you. Oedipus believes that the Gods have control over what happens in his life but he also seems to believe that he can somewhat change what they tell him about his future. " I abandoned Corinth, from that day on I gauged its landfall only by the stars, running, always running toward some place where I would never see the shame of all those oracles come true" (pg. 205). By Oedipus knowing that his fate was doomed due to the curse the Gods gave him, he tried to run from it. Instead of going down the path the Gods were supposed to lead him down so that the curse would someday come true he tried to turn and go into a different direction and down a different road. The only reason Oedipus has chosen to run away from Corinth is to try and get away from the curse of killing his father and marrying his mother.