Oedipus

1. Why do you think it is that the oracles choose to only release partial information when asked a direct question? This occurs when Kreon goes to the oracle to find out how to end the city's plague (1221) and when Teiresias is asked to reveal the murderer (1227).

2. If Teiresias knows all truth then why didn't he answer the Sphinx's riddle rather than wait while the citizens of Thebes died?

These are two of my questions from the first reading of Oedipus and I don't think I ever had them fully answered in the way I would have liked. In my group the main conclusion was that the oracles wanted to limit the information they released in order to prevent him from changing the course of events that were part of his fate. I don't feel that this reason is accurate because at the beginning of the novel the oracle revealed that the son of the king and queen would murder his father and sleep with his mother. This caused the couple to pin the ankles of their newborn and to send him out into the countryside to die. They were making an effort to change this prediction, but were unsuccessful. Why didn't the oracle tell them that they would make this attempt and fail? It was fate that Oedipus met his father on the road to Thebes and committed murder. It was fate that he solved the riddle of the Sphyinx and became the king. I don't believe that they were ever given choice in any matters of their life. Every move they made was part of the gods' plan for them. So why didn't the oracles just tell them everything? It was selfish on their part not to and I think the only reason they didn't disclose all information is because with full information given to all characters, the play would be pointless.