Fate

                Certainly a major theme throughout this semester in honors English has been the topic of fate.  In Homer's writing Achilles may choose his fate, but once he takes a path, it cannot be changed.  God sets people's fate in the Old Testimate, but does not always reveal how someone will reach His end goal.  Even in Republic, Plato says that some people made of gold and silver metals should be fated to rule, and that others must be ruled over.  The idea of people's lives being acted on by a higher power has always been a very popular topic and still is today.

                Now, in our reading about Oedipus we see even more having to do with fate.  In this story we come to understand just how powerful, binding, and inescapable fate truly is.  The king, queen, and Oedipus all try to find ways to escape the terrible prophesy told to them by the seer, but their efforts are all in vein.  However, the three did try as hard as they could to escape their fate.  The parents tie up the feet of their child and leave him to die, and Oedipus leaves who he believes to be his true parents and travels as far away from them as he possibly could.  No matter what they do, the prophesy comes true.

                My question is, there seems to be all sorts of different variations of fate.  Some can be changed or are less powerful, and then there are ones like the one in this story who can't change their fate no matter what they do.  So are there different types of fate, or just one level or variation.  I think there must be different intensities of fate, because how else come some people be able to change it and others not.  Could it be that it is just up to the writer?  I just think it's interesting how different stories about fate can be.

I commented on Emily LaForce's blog "The White Suite"

-Susan Berner