ABSTRACT
Events in Oedipus the King and The Gods Are Not to Blame by Sophocles and Ola Rotimi, respectively, validate the notion that the future, locked in the unknown, can be investigated and exposed through diverse divination procedures. In the texts, both playwrights valorize the Delphic Oracle and Ifa Oracle in Greek and Yoruba mythologies, respectively, paying attention to their immediate accuracy while ignoring their misleading potential and limitations. This article posits that although divination as a prognostic process provides a lens into the seeds of time, it is fraught with inadequacies that have misguided the existential order, thus altered human destiny and evidently created dislocations and gaps in the texts. Although divination appears accurate in the texts, a deconstructive analysis reveals it is full of limitations that the playwrights ignore in a bid to achieve their artistic objectives.
