Free Will and Fate: Oedipus the Kin by Sophocles and The Odyssey by Homer - Assignment Example

What sense would living be, if one is predestined to be what he/she loathes to be and is helpless to change that? Look at Life is surely a tough journey but it is this toughness that makes us human, that makes us who we want us to be. Without making our own choices this would never be possible. Without making our own choices, we can never achieve our being.  While it is true that many things that happen around a man to which he/she reacts are something that he/she could hardly control, the end-result still depends on how a man reacts.

In fact, the story of Oedipus is a tale of how he tried to escape his fate (Eliot 288). Similarly, the myth of Odyssey affirms that life is one’s own responsibility. These two myths consistently show that although the gods decide on man’s destiny, in the end, it is the man who makes his/her own choices to whether or not he/she will succumb to his/her fate. As Kito notes the gods could be seen as those aspects and conditions in man’s life that has to be accepted because they are beyond man’s control (qt.

in Carel 103). For example, in Homer’s Odyssey, the protagonist Odysseus showed in various circumstances that it was the course of actions that he chose to take that mattered. For example, when the gods held Odysseus captive for eight years and later decided to free him to go home, Odysseus still has to decide on Calypso’s offer: to live an immortal but to remain there or be free to go home but remain a mortal. Odysseus could have stayed and been immortal but he chose to go. And when he went home, he chose to disguise himself to his own wife, Penelope, who he encouraged to approach her suitors.

Likewise, Penelope illustrated the power of free will in deciding her fate, as she chose to wait for Odysseus despite her many suitors and as she designs her own strategy in confirming whether the disguised Odysseus is her husband rather than relying on signs and dreams. Clearly, The Odyssey put in place the role that fate and free will plays in shaping man’s destiny. It vividly clarifies the difference between being predestined to something and accepting that fate. In the first place, if Odysseus only chose to be contented with his peaceful life at home, he would have not gone through such ordeals.

In the same way, if only he chose immortality, he would have not come home and been with his beautiful Penelope again. But if Penelope did not choose to wait for him against all odds, and if Telemachus did not choose to safeguard his Odysseus interest, then the ending of their story would have been entirely different. Similarly, Sophocles’s Oedipus made his choice when he committed incest with his mother, Jocasta and when he killed his father, Laius. Although this was prophesied by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Oedipus could have chosen not to do this.

He could have chosen to carefully investigate the death of his father rather than acted in impulsiveness, causing him to commit an action that he himself abhors. In other words, Oedipus had the choice to kill or not to kill Laius, but he chose to kill him.