Saturday, October 27, 2018
Continuing the Discussion on Fate and Prophecy
In class, we started a discussion about fate and prophecies, and I thought it would be fun to continue it here. A question I had asked myself while reading Oedipus was this; if they hadn't asked for the prophecy in the first place, would the situation even have played out this way? Perhaps none of it would have happened; was asking the gods to know the future the act that actually set it? Once a god gave their word, maybe, that was what bound the future because they wouldn't want their power or word to be questioned as false. Or maybe, asking for the prophecy was itself fated. I also was reminded about the fact that many prophecies given by oracles were thought to have many interpretations, and were often vague or worded in such a way that many meanings were possible. Maybe several different outcomes were actually possible, and free will did impact the end result, but it was going to be something that fit into one of the possible interpretations. I did mention this in class, but I think the overall point of the prophecy aspect of the play was to honor the word and power of the gods (the play was made in honor of a god). Thus, keeping in line with the fact that the Greeks viewed the words of the divine as unknowable, I think that the question of fate vs free will was intentionally left up to interpretation and wonder in this play; the Greeks didn't claim to understand the power of the gods all the way, but they praised it and turned to it for guidance.
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Natalia, it's thoughts and pondering like this that get me excited about the material we cover in English classes throughout high school-- or about anything in general really. I agree with you that there are aspects to the way these fates and prophecies work that we really haven't considered/ don't know what to think of; this therefore makes them even more intriguing in works of literature. I don't necessarily disagree with your thought of how maybe the entirety of the story could have been avoided if they didn't asked for a prophecy in the first place. After all, just asking at all is what made them so frantic and in-attempt to stop the prophecies from coming true (which ultimately doomed them). However, if they wouldn't have asked, doesn't that mean that the prophecy would have still existed and came true? It's not like they asked the gods to CREATE a prophecy that will determine their fates and demises-- they only wished to know what it was. So, in that sense, didn't it already exist and therefore was destined to take place?
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