Free Will In The Quest For The Holy Grail

Fate and free will are very closely connected. Both rely on each other in order for destinies to be created. It could be seen throughout the scarlet letter that when characters had a greater power to make their own choices, rather than following fate, they had more strength to change the original course of their destiny. Free will choices can determine one’s fate.

In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.

Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem about of honor, courage, and knightliness. Gawain had to go on an adventure to face the Green Knight after cutting off his head. He faced many challenges to his honor and his faith. The section that showed his faith and honor the most was the hunting scene and the courtly scene. Gawain and the Lord’s scene were very similar because they both had main ideas connected to them, such as fate, courage, and deceit. The hunting scene and the courting scene portrayed Gawain and Reynard escaping their fate for a while. Reynard escaped the hunt for a while by hiding before dawn. Gawain rejected the ring the lady gave him but could not reject the girdle. Reynard’s fate was to die as Gawain’s fate was to accept the

The theme of Fate vs. Free Will arises in many literary texts. Within J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, the main character Frodo has the titular ring thrusted upon him, setting him on a dangerous journey against his will. A similar occurrence happens within the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Translated by the same J.R.R. Tolkien), where Gawain takes on the task of chopping off the Green Knight’s head because no one else offers themself up to take King Arthur’s place, which leads him to go on a journey 365 days later in order to retain his reputation. Both of these characters set off on life-staking journeys only because another person gives them the task against their will. Also because of their male gender, another thing that was beyond their free will, these two characters are easily allowed to go on their adventures in the first place. Even though both Gawain and Frodo are fated to go on their journeys, they do not follow the expectation that a hero must be masculine in order to be successful, and wind up fulfilling their quests by the end of their tales.

St. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will elaborates on the relationship between God, free will, and evil. During the very beginning of Book One, he asks the question, “isn’t God the cause of evil” (Cahn 357). From this question, it can be ascertained that he searches for a connection between God and evil (sins), which inferred in the writing to be connected though free will. He believes that God does not create evil, but rather that evil is simply the lack of good, since God is completely good and, therefore, cannot create evil. God not being the source of evil is then further elaborated through his explanation of a crime and how it is caused by inordinate desires and human abuse of good things (Cahn 360). By explaining

Within the epic poem, “The Odyssey”, humans look to omens and the Gods for hope, confidence, and warnings, revealing a need for supernatural guides, and a belief in fate in order to escape the responsibilities of free will, which proves they blame the gods, instead of recognizing their weaknesses. Humans look to omens for hope. When Odysseus finally returns after being gone for many years, he is reunited with a familiar creature. This is old dog argos: “But when he knew heard Odysseus’ voice nearby, he did his best to wag his tail, nose down, with flattened ears, having no strength to move nearer to his master. And the man looked away, wiping a salt tear from his cheek” (book 17, lines 389- 394)

Free Will is the capacity of acting without the pressures of fate and the ability to act because of one’s discretion. It is an idea that most believe in, because it means that you are in control

Free will “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion” this is not an ability humans possess. Although we would like to think it our will is not free but instead controlled by the circumstances we are in. with this fact in mind many aspects of our lives and truths become clear. With the control of circumstances in our mind we can see the reason why we do things like write assignments or do orals despite proffering death most of the time. Circumstances are the reason why when Liesel stole she was so careful to make sure there was no witnesses to her crime instead of just taking the books, and by looking at the Stanford prison experiment we can see the result of the limitations

One of the most controversial questions within the philosophical spectrum is whether a situations’ outcome is based on fate or free will. Geoffrey Chaucer examines both sides of the argument in “The Knight’s Tale”, which is only a small portion of The Canterbury Tales. The tale centered itself around two men, Arcite and Palamon, who fell madly in love with the same woman, Emily. They were both forced to overcome major obstacles in their paths just to be near her. Yet, in the end, they faced the greatest challenge. Arcite and Palamon, once the best of friends, became the most bitter of enemies, as they fought to determine who would

“’And that,’ put in the Director sententiously, ‘that is the secret of happiness and virtue--liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny. ’”(Huxley 16). This statement, made by the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, presents happiness as the main goal of the dystopian society in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. To achieve happiness in Huxley’s society, morality, free will, and religion must be destroyed and remodeled through the power of a totalitarian government.

Free Will in the dictionary is defined as a voluntary choice or the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate. It’s saying that you have the options to do something. Back in Macbeth time people will say it was Macbeth fate to kill the King Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff family. Back in the time most of the people believe in fate that happens for a reason.

Generally, these two texts are more practical than other texts written in the same spirit, such as the Quest for the Holy Grail, which expects every knights to stay virgin, or the Praise of the New Knighthood, in which Bernard de Clairvaux urges the new religious order of knighthood to be chased on the battlefield before striking a blow. However, these texts sometimes recommend acts that seem out of sync with the reality of knight. For instance, Charny encourages marriages for love, when both spouses are very young and will produce heirs, rather than alliances for wealth, lands and social status, which was yet the most common thing among the nobility. Expectations on knights ' behaviours always seem to high, as if it was impossible to

The controversy of whether the doctrine of determinism or free will guides us throughout our life is constantly debated. Is there a superior being that determines everything that occurs, or are humans free to do whatever they choose? In stories, the collaboration of fate and free will propels the actions of characters throughout the plot. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, there is a certain fate ordained, but there is free will that brings the characters to their fates. On the contrary, the chorus of Euripides’ Medea states “the gods find a way, against all expectation, to do what they want...And that is exactly how this case turned out” (Euripides 1467-1469), suggesting that whatever Medea does is constrained the the fate determined by the gods. That she enacts the judgement of the gods is what she considers the bindings of fate, but under the lens of Harry Potter, Rowling would treat this as free will that endows fate.

Some people believe that no matter what a person does in their life, it will ultimately have no effect on the outcome ofa it. Existentialists find this to be true because they believe that no matter what they ever do, they will always die. Existentialists link the inevitability of death to the idea that there is no higher power. Additionally, existentialists hold the belief that no one should allow society to control how they live their life. Writer Albert Camus uses many existentialist themes his works like The Stranger and “The Guest”. The protagonists in both stories demonstrate existentialist beliefs in their actions. As a result, many existentialist ideas can be seen throughout out both novels. Camus uses the paradox of free will in order to illustrate the inevitability of death for everyone as well as the idea that in order to obtain free will, a person must reject society and face exile.

Casual determinism put simply, is the theory that all things happen for a particular reason and everything is predetermined. It is the idea all the events in one’s life can be explained, and each event has a particular reason for being. If everything is predetermined, then this therefore suggests that the future is fixed which further suggests that we can possibly predict the behavior of things. The theory of determinism ultimately suggests that we don’t the capacity to have free will because all future events are destined to occur, and furthermore we do not posses the knowledge to figure out whether it can be proved true or false (Hoefer). There has been three positions that have developed concerning the theory of causal determinism: hard determinist, compatibilist or soft determinist, and compatibilist.