Fate's Inevitability In Romeo And Juliet

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Fate’s inevitability

Kingston Gearhart

A French proverb says, “You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.” Fate is haunting and inexorable. Romeo and Juliet is a tragic story about a pair of star-crossed lovers who take their lives. Many people presume that their fate is in their own hands. However, this is not the case. Fate controls their hands, not the other way around.

Romeo and Juliet is trying to say something. Its theme is that fate is predetermined. It cannot be avoided. For example, the play tells the reader that the lovers are foreordained to die in the first few sentences. “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life…” (Prologue.6). This quote is saying that their love is doomed to fail and they will kill themselves in the end. Their fate is uncontrollable. Another quote that exercises this idea is when Romeo first discovers that Juliet is “dead”. “Is it e’en so? – then I defy …show more content…
The main character attempts to avoid his fate and it doesn’t work out the way he intended. King Oedipus initiates an argument with a blind prophet and out of anger, the prophet tells Oedipus what his fate is. Oedipus tries everything to avoid it. “He shall be proved father and brother both to his own children in his own house; to her that gave him birth, a son and husband both; a fellow sower in his father’s bed.” (I.535-38). His fate is that he will kill his biological father, King Laius, and he will father his children to his own mother. A fate which is illegal today. In both plays, the main characters’ attempt to change their fate to no avail. Both characters are fated to fail from the beginning. They destroy themselves to avoid their inevitable fates. In Romeo and Juliet, they destroy themselves through suicide. In Oedipus Rex, he tears his own eyes out with his mother’s brooch so he does not need to see what his life has become. Oedipus Rex could be considered a tragedy in this
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