Free Will and Fate in Sartres No Exit and Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus Essay

Free Will and Fate in Sartres No Exit and Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus - Essay ExampleAlthough they conceded that human had the source to choose and make decisions for himself, they felt that these decisions inevitably ended up playing into the hands of fate. This sack up be seen clearly in Oedipus Tyrannus.Oedipus learns from the Oracle that it is his fate to gain his biological father and sleep with own m other(a). Upon learning of his fate, Oedipus flees from the land of his youth in an attempt to escape his fate. After he becomes king, Oedipus seeks to learn the truth groundwork the murder of his father which ca utilisationd the land of Thebes to be cursed. He summons the blind prophet Teiresias who hints at the truth which eerily echoes the oracles predictionEven though Oedipus well-tried to escape his fate by attempting to flee, his heap overrides his free will as he ignorantly winds up fulfilling the oracles prophecies of patricide and incest. In this play, fate is seen a s the master of mans destiny and it shows how man is virtually helpless when it comes to living out his preordained destiny.By contrast, Jean Paul Sartres No Exit has the major underlying theme of existentialism that is that man and man alone controls his destiny. Existentialism is the belief that there is no God or fate and therefore man is in charge of his own destiny. Basically, the previous(prenominal) is past and has no bearing on today, what is here and now is the reality. Man has the free will to choose to be free or he can be imprisoned by letting other people choose his destiny for him. Also by allowing himself to become imprisoned by the past, man is denounce himself to a life that cant be lived. Of the three main characters in No Exit, two are doomed to an eternity in Hell because of their failure to ride responsibility for their actions which got them there in the first place. Besides blaming others for her problems, Estelle even blames her death on fate, then two yea rs ago I met the man I was fated to love. We knew it the moment we set eyes on each other. He asked me to run away with him, and I refused. Then I got pneumonia and it finished me. Estelle is saying that because she denied her destiny, her punishment was death. In life and in death, Estelle allows others to create her self image rather than take responsibility for her own life, this can be seen when she asks the others repeatedly how she looks and through the use of Inez as her mirror, she shows how she is still letting other people determine who she is. Estelle and Garcin both refuse to give up the past, as they go over and over the events that brought them to Hell. Their unfitness to live in the present, in effect condemns them to Hell.In Hell as on earth, Garcin continues to leave his existence in the hands of other people. Garcin let other people decide who he was on earth, at one point even declaring, Ive left my fate in their hands. In Hell, he allows Estelle to determine who he really is by allowing her to define if he is a coward. Garcins inability to leave Hell even when the door is open shows how he lets his fear of being trusty limit his choices and eventually condemns himself.