"If it wasn't this, it'd be something else."

In The Iliad Achilles is faced with a great decision: live a short and glorious life and be remembered forever, or return home as a simple farmer and die of old age. Truly, this is no fair question--for once a question like this is posed it can never be forgotten. Either option will ultimately end in the unanswerable question 'what if...' One sees through Homer's writing this emphasis on fate; it is a force within itself that cannot be stopped, even by the gods. Perhaps this was a common view in the day. Maybe it was simply Homer's view. Regardless, it is interesting to remember that knowing one's fate or even being able to choose one's fate is the source of much turmoil. Once Achilles is given the opportunity to decide the outcome of his life, the reader knows that he will never be happy. Though his fame is apparent throughout the world of The Odyssey, he is miserable in the underworld. Perhaps this view could give Odysseus some comfort in his own outcome, for though his fate has been a rough course, it is a force unstoppable. He had no other options. There is a sort of solace in not having responsibility. Odysseus is free to make the most out of what he has been dealt and will never have to wonder after another theoretical life, as Achilles will do forever in Hades. If Odysseus didn't have the same horrible fate, he wouldn't be the same hero.