Embedded Files
“Nothing seems to tempt fate more than mentioning the possibility of something bad happening.”, says Donald G. Firesmith in his book, Demons of the Dalton. As I sifted through book after book, the internet, and racked my brain for examples of books, shows, and movies that represent the concept of fate and free will, I realized that there’s no lack in literature of them. You can pull out the idea from so many different sources; it’s abundant in our world. These tales have no beginning or end date - they date back from Sophocle’s Oedipus all the way to Adam Silvera’s They Both Die At The End. Each of these tales tells us the same thing: We cement our fates simply by having the knowledge of what they are.
Essentially what I've learnt from all this research and discussion about this ever-so-precarious topic, is that Free Will is more powerful and is the determining factor to what your fate is and how life plays out.
In the story of Oedipus, Oedipus is adopted by the King and Queen of Corinth after being abandoned by his birth parents, the King and Queen of Thebes. We learn that his parents sent out to have him killed because a prophecy said that he would kill his father, and marry his mother.
He grows up, and learns about that prophecy. When he confronts his parents about being adopted, they deny it, but he does have doubt in his mind, so he leaves from home with the intention of avoiding his fate. But by doing so, he sets his fate in his motion.
On his journey, he gets into a street fight with a man recklessly navigating on the streets, and ends up killing the man. Soon after, he marries the Queen and becomes the new King after the king is murdered. Surprise, Surprise, the man he murdered was the King, and he married the Queen, his mother.
Despite the fact that he should have had the common sense to not only not kill a man, but realize that it was no coincidence that he killed a man and married a woman at least two decades older than him.
Had he not known of his “fate”, and gone to lengths to avoid it, it wouldn’t have happened. The knowledge of what happens in the future is exactly the cause of those aforementioned future events.
If we want to look at a more modern example of this, we can turn to Once Upon a Time. The story unfolds 28 years after the Evil Queen, also known as Regina, casts a curse on all the characters in the enchanted forest to get revenge on Snow White and Prince Charming. The curse she casts brings the characters in the Enchanted forest to our world - or as it’s better known, the Land Without Magic - setting time still in a small town called Storybrooke, where they don’t know who they are and don’t age for 28 years.
Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter managed to escape the curse after Charming sent her through a magic wardrobe. The curse, given to Regina by Rumplestiltskin, incorporated a way to break the curse, that only the product of true love could break. By doing that, Rumplestiltskin cemented the fate of him and every other character who would be affected by the curse (which involves characters from Neverland, which is not in the enchanted forest). 28 years after the curse is set, Emma’s biological son escapes the town and his adopted mother (who just happens to be the Evil Queen), finds Emma, brings her back to Storybrooke, telling her of the curse that she needs to break.
At first, she’s wary of staying with Henry in the town, but then chooses to stay. Eventually she believes in the curse and manages to break the curse by kissing Henry on the forehead (an act of True Love) after he falls under a sleeping curse from eating an Apple Turnover given to Emma by Regina in an attempt to show her that it was poisoned. Although Emma breaking the curse is fate, that fate is only set in stone by two things: Emma learning of it by meeting Henry, and then choosing to stay in the quaint town. She could’ve kept attempting to leave. But she chose to stay for Henry, knowing she was the supposed "Savior", therefore cementing her fate.
The YA novel They Both Die At The End is also a prime example of this. It takes place in a modern-ish world where people know when they are going to die - or rather within 24 hours of their deaths. They get a phone call from a company called Death Cast, which lets them know that they will die within 24 hours of getting called.
In this world, there’s an app for people about to die to have a buddy with them for those twenty four hours, and that’s how our wonderful main characters, Rufus and Mateo, meet.
Both know they will die, but neither know how - that’s part of the Death Cast company procedures, they don’t tell you how, only when.
I don’t want to spoil the end, but there is death involved. One of the two characters has a safety issue in his home, and because of that, he ends up dying. He knows he is going to die, he knows something is faulty in his home, yet does nothing. Because in his eyes, his death is already cemented. However, had he not known that he was going to die, he may have taken the initiative to fix the issue or at least not tempt fate and avoid that safety hazard at all costs.
In Aristotle's "On Tragic Character", Aristotle talks about tragedy, and how its structure should be complex in a way that represents the horrible aspects of life and misfortune. There are many ways to possibly interpret this, but I see this as a reference to someone's actions in their life.
Misfortune and other terrible events are not something we can always control, but to say we are completely innocent is also untrue. If we believe that we are fated to fail and face misfortune, why would we, as humans, put in the effort to change? If we don't believe we can make things better for our present and future selves, we wont have the motivation to do anything. And when that motivation and belief isn't there, we're lead into a desperate trap that leads to endless unhappiness and misfortune. If we put our best foot forward with no one telling us whether we can either fail or succeed, we have no other basis to go off of except what we think we're capable of.
The Great Gatsby is no exception to this case. Prior to this story taking place, Jay Gatsby falls in love with Daisy Buchanan, and ultimately sets his life up just to win her back with the belief that they are fated to be together. In reality, however, his "fate" is for it not to work out. He tries altering his fate, and because of that, he ends up dying. It's impossible to say how things would've happened had he taken a less obsessive approach to win her back, but he made the decisions that lead to not only his death, but the failure of a relationship with a woman who never planned to leave her abusive husband.
Of course, inaction is just as bad as action. For this, we can look at practically any horror movie. There's always that one character that walks into the face of danger against some serial killer or paranormal creature, ill prepared to fight or defend themselves, and they almost ALWAYS either end up dead themselves or cause the death of someone else.
In the famous 1979 movie Alien, Lambert is being cornered by the Alien, and is paralyzed with fear - which is understandable, but still. The chief engineer, Parker, tells her to move and save herself, but she doesn't - all she does is scream and cry. Because she didn't, he sacrificed himself for her, and died. Had she listened and taken control of the events, it wouldn't have ended up like it did.
She knew she was in danger, she knew she could've made the choice to gather up the courage to do something, but she didn't. She let her fear overcome her free will.
All in all, it’s easy to conclude that fate and free will are intertwined in ways that we don’t even know, but it is reasonable to say that fate only is set in stone when someone chooses (with their free will) to pursue their fate. And while fate can be a powerful force, free will is more powerful as it is the determining factor in role fate plays in someone's life.
Here are some links on the topic of fate vs free will:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfFreeWillVsFate
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse