Miles Chen, Period 2, 12/29/22

Literacy & Learning

• Write about your thoughts regarding any fiction or nonfiction covered in class.
• Reflect on any new information you have learned in English class by considering how that learning influences your critical perception.
• How is your learning applied to other classes/the world around you?

Oedipus Rex stood out to me with how harsh fate is no matter who encounters it. Only after learning about the context behind the play can the reader understand how cruel the story is. As punishment for raping King Pelop’s son, Laius is cursed to die at the hands of his son, and in a desperate attempt to extend his own life, he abandons his child. Yet even with these extreme measures, he couldn’t escape fate. Oedipus and Jocasta are strung along with Laius’ fate with Oedipus becoming king only to have to watch Thebes suffer from a plague that he unknowingly brought upon them by killing his father. While Jocasta had her child taken away from her by Laius and finally meets her son just to realize she has married him. The dark ending, specifically Oedipus gouging his eyes out and Jocasta hanging herself, makes the story even more harrowing. If my fate is as set in stone as Oedipus Rex portrays it to be, what happens if I’m unfortunate enough to have a tragic fate? Would I be forced to suffer without being able to change my future? After a class conversation, I started wondering about something else as well. If fate was predetermined, then wouldn’t it mean that there's no free will? After all, anything you do would have the same results. On the other hand, if you didn’t know about your fate then the same situation would be occurring, but it wouldn’t affect your decision-making because you wouldn’t be aware of it.

Personally, believing in a predetermined fate would stress me out because to me it means constantly worrying about what my future holds and whether my actions even really have meaning. Yet for the Greeks, it was normal. They believed in divine beings called the Fates who represented inescapable destiny, but also believed that people had free will. Oedipus Rex was a reminder that there will always be someone with a different ideology, with that lesson only being reinforced the more mythologies we studied. For example, in the Book of Job, Job realizes that God sees infinitely more than he can and that he will never be able to truly understand his perspective, while the gods in Norse mythology lived similarly to humans and were supposed to fight alongside them during Ragnarok. There is a clear difference in ideals between the two cultures, but I still find it interesting how different they can be even though both are interpretations of the same planet by people that aren’t biologically different. In my opinion, it goes to show that people mature based on their environment. I don’t think I’ve ever been a particularly judgmental person, but I like to think I’ve become more understanding now instead of just being purely apathetic. I enjoy collaborating with teammates on projects because I always learn something new and sometimes I can give them my perspectives on things. Even when our opinions sometimes clash, I always make sure to stay open-minded about where their opinion is coming from and reflect on why they might disagree with my idea. I plan on continuing this mindset throughout college and the rest of my life after that.