Divine punishment in Oedipus the King and Leda and the SwanDivine punishment is an irreversible event which creates distinct attitudes in the characters. In Yeats' poem Leda and the Swan and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, divine punishment plays a crucial role and forms the basis of Oedipus and Leda's actions. Yeats and Sophocles explore the idea of ​​divine punishment in various ways. Yeats shows Leda's attitude towards the experience of rape, and the outcome of the rape leads to Leda's attitude towards the gods, which then leads to many other parodies. Similarly, Sophocles shows Oedipus' reaction to divine punishment when Oedipus realizes that he killed his father and married his mother. It was these actions that caused Leda and Oedipus to suffer divine punishment. As a result, everyone suffered even more. In Yeats's poem, Leda and the Swan, Yeats explores the idea of ​​divine punishment using the outcome of Leda's rape as the subject. The offspring produced by Leda represent the divine punishment of the story. In the story, Leda is raped by a swan, which represents Zeus, the most powerful Greek god. The consequences of this rape include two children, Helen and Clytemnestra who later marry and experience the fall of the Trojan Empire and the murder of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra's husband. The story of Leda and the Swan creates a gripping portrait of a rape between an all-powerful swan and Leda, the Spartan queen. It is strange that two such powerful individuals would be the subjects of this horrific act of rape. Zeus is the most powerful of all the gods, and Leda herself possesses great power, being the queen of Sparta. However, apart from this, there is another subject that Yeats attempts to explore: the idea of ​​divine punishment. The mere thought of punishment from the Divine, that is, God, is why Leda allows the Swan to continue the rape without much of a fight. Yeats writes: “Being so captivated, so mastered by the raw blood of the air, did she acquire her knowledge with its power before the indifferent beak could let her down? (Kuehn 140). Here, Leda must choose whether or not to put all her power on Zeus, knowing that he has harmed her. His action of not resisting force leads to divine punishment.