Oedipus and Fate

Fate was a central part of many Greek tragedies of the time.  Even in a play like Oedipus where the "Hand of God" doesn't come in at the finish, it is obvious that Sophocles believes in fate.  When I read this, I was really trying to figure out what Sophocles wanted to say about fate.  Oedipus was not a new story and the audience was well versed in the history.  In fact, Aeschylus had won the first prize at the festival of Dionysus with his own trilogy about Oedipus.  So what is it that Sophocles felt he had that was new to bring to the tale?

Since Sophocles clearly believes in fate, it must be something about the choice of either accepting or fighting your fate.  In Sophocles' play, all parties that have a choice between accepting or fighting fate choose to fight.  First, it is the parents of Oedipus who abandon their child and have him left to die.  Many years later, it is Oedipus himself who flees his home in an attempt to make sure that he doesn't fulfill the prophecy.  I can't help but read into this that Greeks, while believing in fate, did not believe that they had to accept it.  Sophocles clearly makes a statement by having his characters attempt to fight their fate.

Another part that really interested me was the fact that Sophocles chose not to have the Greek gods as major characters in his play.  While we have prophets and oracles operating in the world of Oedipus, the actual gods are nowhere to be found.  I wonder if this wasn't some subtle hint on Sophocles' part to have people question their gods.  Clearly that is not the way most people interpret it, but just about every other play I have read from the era has gods as central characters.  Most have them come on at the end to finish the play.  But in Sophocles' Oedipus, the play ends with Oedipus blinded and leaving the city.  Could this be a case of saying that we are all are own gods?  Oedipus does fulfill the prophecy, but the reprecussions for his actions do not involve him being punished by the gods.  His reprecussions are brought on entirely by himself.  He scratches out his own eyes and he makes the choice to abandon his children.  Now I know that Sophocles mentioned that Thebes was suffering from a plague because of the unsolved murder of their king, but the gods knew the identity of the murderer.  There would have been no reason to punish the population if they knew how everything was going to end, so maybe there was some subtle subtext at play where Sophocles was asking bigger questions about Greek beliefs.