In modern society, people do not go to the Oracle of Delphi to discover their future. They go to a bank to protect their money or to an economist to find out which stocks are rising. And people don't make sacrifices to prevent disease; they receive vaccinations and routine tests in a doctor's office. Society no longer depends on the stars; it’s based on science. While the Greeks believed in the power of oracles and the stars, humanity now turns to science to predict its fate. But the Greeks were not content to discover their fate. They also wanted to escape it. In Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus and Jocasta take action to thwart the misery prophesied for their future. It is predicted that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother, so he will run away from the parents he knows (Sophocles 44). Fate declares that Jocasta will marry his son, so she attempts to murder him when he was a child (Sophocles 40). Naturally, this leads us to wonder if escaping from destiny, like the pursuit of destiny itself, is a theme that has survived through the ages. Are people still trying to escape their destiny today? In Oedipus Rex, the characters are unable to escape their fate. Despite all the measures Jocasta and Oedipus take, they end up simply facilitating their fate, orchestrating their own destiny while trying to escape it. Oedipus flees Corinth to get away from his parents. But in doing so, he finds himself in Thebes, the city of his real parents (Sophocles 44). And Jocasta tries to have her son killed as a three-day-old baby (Sophocles 40), but in doing so she only ensures that she will not be able to recognize him as an adult. In fact, ironically enough, even though Oedipus strives to be a fair and caring ruler in...... middle of paper ......blic Health Review. Harvard School of Public Health - HSPH, 2000. Web. March 2, 2011. "CDC - Avian Influenza (Flu) | Key Facts About Avian Flu." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Internet. March 2, 2011. "Life expectancy by age, 1850-2004 — Infoplease.com." Infoplease: Encyclopedia, Almanac, Atlas, Biographies, Dictionary, Thesaurus. Free online reference, research and homework help. —Infoplease.com. Internet. March 02, 2011. .Rabin, Roni C. “Childhood obesity risks death at early age, study finds.” » The New York Times. The New York Times, February 10, 2010. Web. March 2, 2011. Sophocles. The Oedipus plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonos, Antigone. Trans. Paul Roche. New York: Plume, 2004. Print.