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Essay / Fate, destiny, free will and free choice in...
Do you believe in destiny? To answer this question, one must first have a correct idea of what destiny is. One definition of destiny would be the power believed to decide in advance how things will happen. Is there such a power that governs our lives, and if so, why? Romeo and Juliet, the two young lovers in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, ended up becoming a large part of what might be called "destiny." Destiny seemed to control their lives and force them to come together, becoming a big part of their love and ending their parents' hatred. In this play, fate has become the ultimate controlling power and plays an important role in modern daily life, even if we do not recognize it. Maybe we don't recognize it because we choose not to, or because we don't have the faith we used to, but the fact remains that destiny controls what we do all the time. throughout our lives. Much of Romeo and Juliet's beliefs involve fate. They believed in the stars and that their actions were not always their own. Romeo, for example, 1.4.115-120, says: "A consequence yet suspended in the stars... by some vile abandonment of untimely death. But he who directs my course directs my sail." Basically, he tells his friends that he had a dream that makes him believe that he will die young because of something in the stars, something that is going to happen. He ends with "...the one who directs my course..." implying that he does not have control of his life if he looks to another power above him to direct him. He doesn't feel like he's the one making the decisions, it's all about a higher goal, a different power. We are all a bit like the puppets under the puppeteer. He asks this puppeteer to steer his “sail,” or his life, in the right direction. Destiny directs us all like puppets on a string, and I firmly believe in it. It is, in many ways, the mystical power that controls who and what we become, and that explains what cannot be explained. Romeo looked towards this power, asking this power to direct him, not to an untimely death as he foresaw in his dream, but simply to direct him, for this is the control he knows he has no control over. not on himself..