Fate vs. Freewill in the Odyssey
Odyssey is an epic poem with the protagonist Odysseus, also called Ulysses. Odysseus is a hero who fights in the Trojan War, which is between Troy and Sparta for ten years. The war results from Paris of Troy kidnapping Helen, the wife to Menelaus. Calypso, the Nymph, detains Odysseus for seven years after the war. Calypso is deeply in love with Odysseus and she pleads with him to marry her in return for immortality, but he turns down the offer because of his undying love for his wife, Penelope. Back in Ithaca, Odysseus’ homeland, his wife and son, Telemachus, are worried that Odysseus got killed during the war. Many suitors come to Odysseus’ home to ask for Penelope’s hand in marriage while trying to convince her that her husband is dead. However, Athena assures Odysseus’ family that he is still alive. Finally, Odysseus is set free from Calypso’s island, with the help of Athena, a goddess who protects him, who convinced Zeus to intervene and Zeus orders Calypso to release Odysseus. He moves to Phoenicia where he gets help to return to his homeland, Ithaca. He returns to his home as a wandering beggar where he kills all the suitors. The story is based on fate and freewill. Fate is defined as the turn up of events, usually caused by supernatural powers, which are beyond a person’s control. On the other hand, freewill entails a person’s ability to act without any constraints. This paper will analyze the effects of free will on fate and the negative consequences of fate in peoples’ lives.
Fate might be something meant to happen in people’s lives, but they have the power to change it. The gods give one a choice to determine what they want to do with their fates. Aigisthos, a man who conspired with Agamemnon’s wife to kill him had been warned by the gods earlier but did not listen. The gods send Hermes, a friendly messenger, to go to Aigisthos and deliver a friendly advice but he gives Hermes a deaf ear. He goes ahead to kill her lover’s husband, Agamemnon, but later Agamemnon’s son kills Aigisthos and his mother. When Odysseus begin, Zeus is talking to other gods about the mortals. He says, “My word how mortals take the gods to task! All their affiliations come from us, we hear. And what of their own failings?” (Homer 37)
These words explain that despite the fact that the gods can plan something for humans, it is their choice to follow or deny the fate. The gods plan, but are not sure on whether the people will abide by fate. Thus, human beings should do their best to better their lives and stop blaming it on fate. Also, when Athena comes to Telemachus, she gives him courage to address the community to help him stop the suitors. She also talks him into travelling to Sparta to enquire about his father but does not abruptly give him artificial strength. She gives him the free will to choose whether he wants to go to Sparta or not. Telemachus uses his own human abilities during the journey. Athena only guides him and protects him from supernatural creatures and those with ill intentions towards him.
When Odysseus and his crew goes to rest on the island owned by Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son. Polyphemus is angry and eats some Odysseus’ crew members. This irritates Odysseus and he removes Polyphemus’ eyes living him blind. After blinding him, he tells him to tell anyone who asks about his blindness that it was Odysseus of Ithaca who made him blind. Polyphemus remembers that it was prophesied that a man called Odysseus would make him blind (Jong 86). Polyphemus is aware that his encounter with Odysseus is as a result of fate but Odysseus is not aware. Polyphemus cries out to his father, Poseidon, the God of the sea, to hear him and not to allow Odysseus to go back to his homeland, Ithaca. He pleads with his father to make his journey as slow as possible without any companion if it is fate that he must return to his family and fatherland. This makes Odysseus’ journey to last for ten years and he returns to Ithaca alone. However, Odysseus struggles to make his way back home despite the fact that he is fighting Poseidon’s curse. Due to his willingness and hope, he returns to his family after being separated for two decades.
The gods are willing to support freewill even though they are in charge of destinies and they wish for fate to be fulfilled. This is evident when the gods detain Odysseus for a decades. Calypso imprisons him for a decade because she hopes that he would stay. Despite Calypso pleading with him to marry her and become immortal, Odysseus’ love for his son and wife is strong enough that he rejects her proposal. The gods had taken so much from him that he had enough reason to accept that as his fate, but he did not. Finally, the gods gave up and released him because they knew that no matter how long he stays, he will never change his mind. When ordered to release him by Zeus, Calypso gives Odysseus a ship to sail him from the Island. The gods protect Odysseus on his journey to his homeland .According to Olson (78), Odysseus is destined to suffer and return home after the war without his companions but he does not give up. Despite going against the gods’ will, they still support him. Athena supports Odysseus throughout the journey. Odysseus almost drown when his boat is destroyed by Poseidon, the God of the sea, but, the goddess, Athena, comes to his rescue. After arriving to Phoenicia, Athena appears to the Princess of Phoenicia in a dream. She advises her to go to the river and wash her clothes in order to attract more suitors. At the river, she sees Odysseus and directs him to her father’s house. The Phaeacians receives Odysseus well, according to Zeus’ code of hospitality, and later helps him to travel to his homeland Ithaca. Athena also goes to Ithaca to stop the plans of Penelope’s suitors to marry her. The purpose of the assembly called by Telemachus is to gain community support in stopping the suitors. This shows that the gods are ready to help out whether you accept fate or not. The gods’ plan is to detain Odysseus but the same gods assist him on his way home because they know that he will not surrender to fate.
Sometimes freewill and the choices we make can contribute to change of fate. Bad choices in life may lead to bad fate as a punishment for peoples’ mistakes. This is when the gods are not pleased with one’s actions. The suitors go to Penelope’s house with the aim to marry her. However, they behave in a very unruly way and makes bad decisions. They even plan to kill Penelope’s son when he returns from Sparta. According to Thornton (56), the gods see all this and they foresee where the choices will lead them but they chose not to do anything to change the suitors’ behaviors. These choices result to consequences that the suitors could not escape. Athena tells Odysseus to try the suitors and know the ones that are decent, but none of them should escape death. Death is the fate that the gods impose on the suitors because of their wrong choices while in Odysseus’ house. Also, Odysseus’ bad fate comes as a result of making Polyphemus blind. After blinding Polyphemus, he boasts to him and told him to tell anybody who enquired of his blindness that it was Odysseus of Ithaca who did. This angers Poseidon and this lead to his journey back to Ithaca being prolonged. If Odysseus chose not to boast off his name, he would have escaped Poseidon’s wrath.
Although sometimes people are given the freedom of choice, fate can work towards the distraction of free will living a person with no choice than to abide by it. Odysseus’ will to return home is so strong that he is willing to go to Hades, the underworld, if it is what it takes to know about his fate. Nobody goes to the land of the dead and returns alive if he or she is not the son of god. Odysseus is eager to speak to Tiresias, the blind prophet, who would tell him about his fate. Tiresias informs him of Poseidon’s curse for blinding his son. He warns him to watch his crew carefully and prevent them from eating the cattle of the sun god, Helios. Odysseus makes his men to take an oath while resting on the Island of the sun that they would not eat any cattle. However, a strong wind occurs and Odysseus’ crew is trapped on the island. They ran out food stocks and start to starve. While Odysseus is asleep, Eurylochus, his trusted crewman, convinces the other crewmen to eat the cattle telling them that it is better to die from the wrath of the gods than to die of hunger (Cook 38). When Odysseus wakes up, he is shocked to find that they have broken the oath and Eurylochus is the cause. He has known Eurylochus to be a sensible man throughout the journey but now he has turned into a risk taker which is so abrupt. Their action angers Helios and he pleads with Zeus to punish Odysseus’ men. The gods agree to punish the men because they act foolishly yet they know the consequences of their actions. Eventually, they all die thus fulfilling Poseidon’s curse.
Freewill can also work together with fate. The way that Poseidon goes against Zeus’ will is a good example. While fate has it that Odysseus must return home after the war, Poseidon has the choice to determine how much and for how long Odysseus suffers in his journey (Thornton 67). He also makes sure that all his crewmen die even after having a choice to evade death. This is to make sure that Odysseus suffers as a lonely man. However, the other gods work together to make Odysseus’ journey successful which leaves Poseidon with no other choice than to set him free.
While the gods’ influence is more helpful, a person’s freewill plays a big role. After Poseidon wrecks Odysseus’ ship, Odysseus clings to a tree so that he does not drown. While it is the gods who chose to spare his life, he shows the will to cling to life and save himself (Cook 57). If he chose to let go, he would have died regardless of the gods’ will to save him. However, sometimes Odysseus’ freewill is not enough and he needs the gods’ intervention in order for thing to work in his favor. When Odysseus goes to save his crew from Kirke, Hermes appears to him and assures him that he can protect him from Kirke’s powers. He gives him something that would make Kirke’s magic useless. Without Hermes’s help, Odysseus would have been captured like the rest of his crew. The gods always determine what his fate will be.
Fate affects people negatively than free will would. This is because, fate is against peoples will, and it brings more harm than good to the people. Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, feels robbed off his father’s love by the gods. Telemachus complains to Athena because he is not pleased with the gods’ actions of robbing him off his paternal love. When talking to the audience, he says, “Once this house was rich, no doubt, beyond reproach when the man you mentioned still lived here, at home. Now the gods have reversed our fortunes with a vengeance --
wiped that man from the earth like no one else before.” (Homer 270-272). This shows that Odysseus’ fate made his son bitter and he blames the gods for it. If it was upon Telemachus to choose, he would have chosen to be raised by both his parents but fate denies him that and he grows up surrounded by arrogant suitors. He is only twenty years and his father has been gone for two decades meaning Telemachus have never met his father. Due to lack of a father figure, Telemachus lacks enough courage to face life challenges but Athena helps him to find the man he is meant to be.
Although freewill has immediate effects, it cannot compete with fate. When Odysseus learns about his crew’s fate, he tries to prevent it by making them take an oath not to eat Helios’ cattle but the gods bring starvation which makes the crewmen to give to temptation thus leading to fulfillment of fate. Secondly, Agamemnon thought that he could escape the vengeance of gods, Nemesis (Olson 93). He goes ahead to sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia, to please the goddess, Artemis, and gain favorable winds. Artemis is pleased by the sacrifice and she enables Agamemnon’s ship to sail, but it later has its consequences and Agamemnon is killed by his wife. In some cases there is free will but the character is helpless. Odysseus stayed for many years grieving for mercy from the nymph but he could not move from the island for there was no ship left for him. Zeus had to intervene and alter Odysseus fate for he was helpless and unable to escape the situation. Therefore, free will and fate would be non-existent without gods to determine a person’s destiny.
Penelope has a freewill to choose another man as her husband but this does not happen because it is prophesied that her husband would return home and they would be reunited as husband and wife (Jong 64). She stays hopefully that her husband is still alive and when she is about to give, Athena comes and assures her that her husband is still alive and he will return home soon. Also, she cannot seem to find the right suitor who deserves her because all the suitors in her compound were arrogant and
Although people try to exercise their free will in Odysseus, it is difficult as many a times, fate always wins. This is because fate is planned by the gods, supernatural being who have more power than the normal humans. However, the world today has changed and people has the responsibility to better their lives for a better tomorrow instead of sitting back and waiting for thing to happen as ‘destined’. Believing in fate encourages laziness and lead to increased poverty in the society.
Works Cited
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Jong, Irene. Homer: Assessments. United Kingdom: Psychology Press, 1999. PRINT.
Thornton, Agathe. People and Themes in Homer’s Odyssey. New York: Routledge, 1970.
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Olson, Douglas. Blood and Iron: Stories and Storytelling in Homer’s Odyssey. Leiden: E.J. Brill,
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