Oedipus, Fate, and Tragedy

The Fates The Fates have the subtle but awesome power of deciding a man's destiny. They assign a man to good or evil. Their most obvious choice is choosing how long a man lives. There are three Fates: Clotho, the spinner, who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, the measurer, who chooses the lot in life one will have and measures off how long it is to be; Atropos, she who cannot be turned, who at death with her shears cuts the thread of life.

Fatalism fa·tal·ism (f t l- z m) n. 1. The doctrine that all events are predetermined by fate and are therefore unalterable. 2. Acceptance of the belief that all events are predetermined and inevitable. fa tal·ist n. fa tal·is tic adj. fa tal·is ti·cal·ly adv.

Fate, Fatalism, and Being Fatalistic “ But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.” - C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

The Concept of Fate To invoke the concept of fate or have a fatalistic vision of experience is to claim that the most important forces that create, shape, guide, reward, and afflict human life are out of human control. The terms fate and fatalistic assert that someone or something is in control, and hence the universe does not operate by chance.

Modern Attitude to Fate We have been trying to take control of the game of life, to reshape it to our own purposes, and to deny the existence of some greater powers over which we have no control. We have done this by launching a massive project to assault as much of nature as we can, so as to bring it under human control, so that we are no longer victims of casual changes in climate, bacterial infections, harvest failures, natural disasters. And we have been, in many quarters, so spectacularly successful that we are encouraged to think that we have only a short route to go before we become, as the saying has it, masters of our own fate.

Are We Masters of Our Own Fate? Severe natural disasters or new outbreaks of massive lethal epidemics and similar occurrences are often unpleasant reminders that, even if we don't like to think about fate, we may not have put our fates as much under our control as we might wish. Oedipus the King, some have argued, is making precisely that point

HIV kills around 250,000 a month pacific \ pacific \ Flu Pandemic killed more people than the Black Death. 3%-6% of the world’s population died. Estimates vary between million dead.

Traditional Hero The most significant feature of a traditional hero in comparison with the others in his community is his willingness to act, to make decisions (usually in response to a crisis of some kind), and to step forward and take risks in the face of fate at a time when such decisions are necessary. In Greek tragedies, nowhere more clearly than in Oedipus the King, this quality is what separates the hero from the chorus. The latter typically acknowledge their timidity or bewilderment or anxiety in the face of the crisis and look to the hero for leadership, often placing their hopes in the hero's record of previous successes. They are followers and require someone to step out an assume the risks of making decisions about what the community should do.