Practice Essay World Literature How do the concepts of fate and free will contribute to our understanding of the world? In our everyday life, there are different events occurring to you and to the people and the environment that surround you. These events can be as insignificant as what branch a bird decides to land on, or as colossally important as Russia starting a nuclear holocaust out of boredom. But both events can be interpreted different ways, you could believe it was fate that such a thing should happen and no one was to blame, or that the only ones responsible are the people who CHOOSE to do such a thing. People are responsible for their actions and consequences, and if it wasn’t like that we would be living in a society in which …show more content…
It is just far too easy to say: “If what I did was wrong, how come nothing stopped it? It must have been fated, therefore I did nothing wrong.” By giving us this feeling that our life is predestined, we no longer feel like we’re responsible for our actions and the consequences. We can find clear literary examples of this “fated destinies” in Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”. In the play, the two main characters fall in love with each other, in spite of their two feuding families who would be devastated to find out they’re together. Sadly, things turn out for the worse as the two characters, due to misunderstandings and ill-timed events end up killing themselves. For example, in the last act just after Romeo kills Paris, and then himself, Juliet wakes only to see her beloved’s corpse as Friar Lawrence rushes over to her. Friar Lawrence is stating that a higher power, in this case, fate has ruined their plan. We know that Friar Lawrence is talking about fate when he says that they cannot contradict this power. According to this play you cannot contradict fate, it always has it’s way in the end, whether we know it or not. One could argue that it was God’s plan that Romeo and Juliet to die, as a medium to end the feud between the two families and prevent further