Fate And Free Will In Homer's Odyssey

Arguments concerning the influence of Fate over Free Will, and vice versa, are not unique to our post-Enlighten mindset. Some of the greatest thinkers of all time, such as Aristotle or Plato, dealt directly with this issue in their numerous commentaries that we still look at today. Even within our Bibles we see Fate and Free Will actively playing roles within the famed stories and lives included in both the Old and New Testament. It’s not surprising, then, when we see similar themes relating to these concepts come up within fictional or mythical works originating from the same period. One of the works that these issues are most evident within is Homer’s famed poem, The Odyssey. All throughout the play, you see the characters at the mercy of

However, in many cases, it appears that both Fate and Free Will are occurring at the same time, competing to have the dominant position leading the character’s current situation. This concept is best shown within the description found in Book Nineteen discussing Penelope and one of her most associated symbol; the loom. The symbol of the loom not only represents Penelope’s cleverness, but is meant to show that even when it appears that Penelope is using her free will to control her current situation, Fate is still working behind the scene and being used to advance not only her destiny, but her son and husband’s as well.

To determine the roles that Fate and Free Will play within in Penelope’s renowned plot, we must first understand what exactly in taking place. In Book Nineteen, Penelope is unknowingly confining within Odysseus, who is still disguised, in the palace. Here, she is talking about her keeping loyalty to her husband and how her great plan of deception came to be. In lines 167 to 170, she explains her plans, saying, “So by day I’d weave at my great and growing web- by night, by the light of torches set beside me, I would unravel all I’d done. Three whole years I deceived them blind, seduced them with this

In line 153 we are told that; “A god from the blue it was inspired my first,”. We realize that Penelope didn’t have sole control within this episode, and from the very start the gods have been involved with this plan and used it for their own benefit. They first inspired the idea for this grand scheme, and then Penelope took it and ran with it to make it her own. The plan was ordained and recognized by the gods from the very start.; if the gods hadn’t want Penelope to do this, or keep it up for as time she did, they wouldn’t have given the idea to her in the first place. It was a part of Penelope’s pre-determined Fate to scheme her suitors this way because it was crucial to the gods to use this scenario as a tool to help unravel the bigger Fate that ties every character individual tales into one big and complete story. The gods used Penelope’s “choice” of orchestrating this plan in order to seal the destiny of what was to come, starting a domino effect among crucial events that occur within the epic. In order for us to understand how the events relate to each other, we must place Penelope’s plot at the starting point, so we can see the timing and importance of this, and how it influences what happens with the other characters. First, let us start with the growth and maturity of Telemachus. For three years while Penelope was executing