Fate’s Puppetry

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“Fate’s Puppetry,” is a Project by Kenneth Meyerson about The Odyssey; by Homer. This project was designed to provide a better understanding of the powerful role fate in the world and how humans seem to be subject to fate. Within the story of The Odyssey, the gods are unaffected by fate and are witnesses to it. Some gods are actively trying to aid mankind who is subject to fate; however, the god’s aid is often futile. What is fate and how does fate affect human life? Moreover, what effect do the gods have upon human fate? Fate is defined in multiple dictionaries as the force or principle believed to predetermine events, a consequence or final result of an action taken, or inevitable death. In the context of this paper, fate is the outline or plot of a person’s or character’s life. Fate is present from the beginning of time to the end of time, and “time” for a human starts with an individual’s first recollections and ends with their last breath and conscious thought or observation. Gods do not have complete control over mortals and of mortal’s fate, as gods cannot dictate the choices that mortals make. Instead, as bystanders and overseers, gods can issue warnings or emulate decisions designed to influence others, but they cannot change fate alone. The individual mortal must in the end make choices that alter his fate and the fates of others.

The characters in The Odyssey make choices at every moment, just as individuals today do. For every choice made, there is a reaction and a result that responds to the choice made. This sparks the never ending chain of action-reactions within an individual’s “time”. Telemakhos describes the suitors of Penelope as, “[coming] /to slaughter flocks of mine and my black cattle;” by choice and sel...

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...dependence and power. Modern man strives to think that the world revolves around him and that all choices are made to cause change to him alone. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is an interpretation of how humans seek independence from time and space through understanding, but Einstein also said that there will never be enough satisfactory answers for humans that are quantifiable, and thus man must always be able to look back to basic philosophy for unquantifiable answers.

Works Cited

"Albert Einstein." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. .

Homer, and Robert Fitzgerald. The Odyssey. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998. Print.

O Brother, Where Art Thou. Dir. Joel Coen. Prod. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Succes, 2001. DVD.

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