Student Research Report sample g

O Fortuna: Fate vs Will in Tragedy

            Between the pages of nearly any Greek or Renaissance tragedy, and, indeed, many modern tragedies, a reader will find within the plot a twist of inevitability; the mark of Fate, the playwright moving plot with destiny.  In Greek tragedy, playwrights use this technique frequently; Shakespeare made fortune his tool; and even modern playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry and Eugene O’Neill have made use of this force which seems to drive human beings before it.  Yet in every play, in the face of destiny, the playwrights, from Sophocles to Shakespeare to O’Neill often seem to be asking a question, even if indirectly: Are lives driven by destiny—or the human will?  As with all great questions of the human condition, this one may be asked over and over again and still not be answered fully. From ancient times until now, destiny and fate still make up a principle tool in the playwright’s workshop.

            Human knowledge, or will, often poses a counter to the decreed fate of the gods.  In “Antigone”, the first Ode exalts mankind and at the end of the ode juxtaposes the intellect and fate: “O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure! / O fate of man, working both good and evil!” (Jacobus 113).  Dr. Clayton G. McKenzie speaks of a Renaissance wood-cutting, “titled ‘Fortuna et Sapienta’, [which] poses the damsels of Knowledge (Sapientia) and Fortune (Fortuna) as irreconcilable opposites” (McKenzie 4).  Antigone cries out against the inevitability that her marriage should be poisoned by her father’s unwitting crimes: “O Oedipus, father and brother! / Your marriage strikes from the grave to murder mine” (Jacobus 120).  Yet her complaints seem almost a farce when the entire play hinges on two decisions made in full human knowledge: Kreon’s decision not to bury Polyneices and Antigone’s decision to disobey Kreon’s decree.  Kreon concludes, “Fate has brought all my pride to a thought of dust” (Jacobus 125); and yet readers can see more clearly than Kreon the decisive pattern that brings him to the end of the play.  “Behind the idea of fortune lay the premise that those who commit themselves to fortune must endure the consequences of that commitment”, states McKenzie.  Even the classical Greek tragedy seems to emphasize that relying on fate rather than clear knowledge of self and circumstance brings about the downfall of kings.  Perhaps this is why the ancient texts later became so useful to Freud and other psychoanalysts; the Greek plays emphasize the follies of the human mind in clear and unclouded patterns.

            In “Medea”, the nurse cautions Jason’s sons, “Don’t approach. Beware, watch out / For her savage mood, destructive spleen: / Yes and her implacable will” (Jacobus 138).  Looking out for the will of human beings seems more likely to be useful in avoiding trouble than in watching out for fate.  Medea, relentlessly manipulative, forces events to her own will, and wreaks her revenge at the expense of many lives.  One might say that Jason was left to the mercy of fate, but within the patterns of the play, one can see it is human will that affected all events.  Similarly, in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, O’Neil eschews the use of fortune as a literary device, choosing instead to focus on the human will to act or not act, as circumstances present themselves.  Each character in “Long Day’s Journey” seems to focus on pinning blame on the actions of the others in the family; mentions of fate and fortune are conspicuously absent from this play.  Even the slightly more solid foundation of religion (as opposed to fate) offers no answers for the characters.  Mary, searching for some way out of her fog, cries, “If only I could find the faith I lost…” (O’Neill 109).  McKenzie states that “[. . .]a well-established tradition of fortune[. . .] heralded religious belief as the means of circumventing fortune’s adversities” (McKenzie 5). Yet, ironically, neither Zeus, in Medea’s case, nor God, in Mary Tyrone’s case, interferes with the process which human will and free choice has set in motion. 

            In the same vein of thought, “’Night Mother” presents a tragedy that focuses entirely on the human will.  Marsha Norman gives readers a character, Jessie, who by the force of her own will effects her own death while trying to ease her mother’s sorrow and leave things in perfect order behind her.  Norman, like O’Neill, avoids any mention of fate or fortune, although interestingly enough, Jessie has been far more affected by fate than any of O’Neill’s characters.  Epilepsy, which was once known as the “divine disease” because the gods were said to possess the body in the fits, is Jessie’s burden, a random circumstance that human will cannot bring about or take away.  Jessie’s situation has more of the inevitable about it than any of the situations in the Greek tragedies, in Hamlet, or in O’Neill’s plays; yet Jessie’s reactions to this circumstance are driven along purely by force of will—indeed, she seems to insist upon enforcing her will, perhaps as an answer to the epilepsy that seemed to rob her of her will for most of her life.

            It would take years of study to mine every tragedy, seeking the playwright’s stamp of fate on every character.  Because a play is a construct, with a specific structure, interplay of “fate versus will” may easily be show within the plot, as the reader comes to the end of the play, able to see the entire picture.  Perhaps this, too, is the legacy of the great playwrights of the past and of our time: That to see the patterns of fate or the effects of human action, one must first know the end result of a set of events.  To see these patterns in true life would mean taking a much larger step back from the tapestry that we all live within – a step that no human being is able to fully take.  Shakespeare put it, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves[. . .]” (Julius Caesar I:ii:140-41).  Whether human beings are ruled by fortune or by knowledgeable action, the playwrights leave us a legacy with which tools more answers can be posed—and more questions asked than answered.

Works Cited for Research Report

McKenzie, Clayton G. Orbis Litterarum. Volume 56. Issue 5: 355-67. 2001.

Jacobus, Lee A. ed. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. New York: Bedford. 2001.

O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1989.

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