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Free Will In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Decent Essays

The concept of predetermined destiny in literature has been prevalent for millennia. Some famous works include the works of Sophocles around the myth of Oedipus, the Odyssey, La Forza del Destino, Macbeth, and one of William Shakespeare’s most well-known stories, Romeo and Juliet. Destiny, fate, the future, karma, fortune, the divine will, the star’s will, or the outcome, whatever you wish to call it, are all a higher power that controls the lives, actions, or consequences of people in literature, and in some beliefs, reality. This destiny in almost all literature controls the characters and environment in a story. This control causes different events occur, that lead to other events, until a resolve or the end of the story. In the book and play Romeo and Juliet, fate takes all control over every character in it. At times it seems that a character such as Romeo has free will, but in truth, their will causes fate’s final outcome to come true. Some characters are conscious enough to realize that they have no real control over their life, for instance when Romeo after hearing of Juliet's death, says he curses the stars and their will. Fate is inescapable. In this story, the only way to truly escape fate is through death, or that's how the two protagonists see it. …show more content…

The story opens with a sonnet; a line states this, “... A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life…” this shows that before the story even starts, that these two mere children will have their lives entwined by the stars with each others, falling deeply in love and dieing in love, and not having any choice about

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