The real power of Oedipus Rex lies not in the fact that it illustrates the Oedipus complex-that Oedipus was oedipal-but that it depicts a troubling and seemingly universal dimension of human behavior; the way we unwittingly create the fate we fear and dislike. Oedipus, like most of us, falls victim to what he desperately tried to avoid. We identify with Oedipus not because we wish to have one parent and remove the other, but because we too end up exactly where we didn't want to, the woman who was abused as a child chooses partners who mistreat her; and the boy who was crushed by his negligible status in his family of origin unwittingly plans his life so that as an adult he is repeatedly unseen and underappreciated. What Oedipus could teach us is how magnetic the pull is to repeat what we desperately wish to escape.
Oedipus, the protagonist of the play, is the birth son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. Laius learns from an oracle that he is doomed to perish by the hand of his own son, which impels him to bind tightly the feet of the infant Oedipus and order Jocasta to kill the infant. She is hesitant do so as his mother and instead she demands a servant to commit the act for her, but the servant abandons the baby in the fields, leaving the infant's fate to the gods. A shepherd rescues the infant, names him Oedipus which in Greek means swollen foot. Oedipus is taken to Corinth and to be raised in the court of the childless King Polybus of Corinth, as if he were his own. According to Freud, the Oedipus Complex is the desire of a boy to possess his mother and supplant his father. This complex is roundly exhibited in the play 'Oedipus Rex', where Oedipus does end up murdering his birth father and marrying his birth mother, Jocasta. This unconscious desires Freud posits emanates from our dreams. .
Being driven by fear and desperate to avoid his foretold fate, Oedipus leaves Corinth in the belief that once he is out of the reach of Polybus and Merope he will never harm them.
