There are some specific actions that key characters take
regarding death that have a huge effect on the fulfillment of the Oracle's prediction
that Oedipus would "kill his father and marry his
mother."
First Jocasta confesses that she has beaten the
Oracle at it's own game by taking a child that she had and ordering a shepherd to
abandon it and leave it to die. In this way, she would avoid the prediction by taking
matters (and Fate) into her own hands -- if it had
worked.
When Oedipus heard the prophecy that he would kill
his father and marry his mother, he left his home with his "father" Lepidus, and
travelled to escape this prediction. He met a man on the road as stubborn as himself,
and when neither would move aside to let the other pass on the narrow road, he, in a
rage, killed this man and went on his way.
Of course, it is
discovered later that Jocasta's baby was saved by the same shepherd she gave it to, when
he gave the child to a shepherd from Lepidus' land, who, in turn, gave the child to
Lepidus' wife, who longed for a baby. It is also discovered that the man that Oedipus
killed was Laius, Jocasta's husband and Oedipus'
father.
When the facts of these deaths and escaped deaths
are revealed, it is clear that the oracle, despite the maneuvers of the humans in the
play, has indeed come true. So, death can be seen in the play as a fact of Fate,
something ordained by the gods that, try as one human might, cannot be outwitted. This
could definitely be seen as one part of the sobering and tragic vision of the
play.
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