Fate In Ted Chiang's Story Of Your Life

If there was a way to discover one’s own destiny, would the man avert himself from it, or learn to accept it and go along? In Ted Chiang’s Story Of Your Life, the main character Dr. Louise Banks sees her own fate while doing her work on the alien’s language. Foreshadowing events in her life strongly support the theme “accepting one’s fate” of the story. This is represented by how she foreshadows events she would dislike and events she would find satisfactory. Firstly, whenever Louise foreshadows her future, more of them tend to be events that she would not particularly enjoy. She deals with this by letting nature run its course, even though she would regret doing it. Once, she foreshadowed a conversation with her daughter, and at the moment, she thought, “I’m actually going to say that, aren’t I? God, somebody please shoot me.” By saying this, Louise is forcing herself to act upon an action she does not believe to be the best thing to do. Another example of this is when she thinks about her daughter getting injured by a certain bowl, while in the present she visits the store with Gary and she thinks, “I reached out and took the bowl from the shelf. The motion did not feel like something I was forced to do. Instead it seemed just as urgent as my rushing to catch the bowl when it falls on you: an instinct that I felt right in following.” When she foreshadows her daughter’s injury, she is affected by it, but she does

This has been closely analyzed by the how Louise’s foreshadowing of events that are viewed upon as positive and negative contributes to the theme. In the foreshadowed moments she does not enjoy, she forces herself to accept her fate, and in the moments she does like, she gracefully accepts her fate. Many stories which have a similar theme most likely has had the literature term foreshadowing in