Et tu, Moonglum?
When I was a sophomore in high school, I got into an argument with my English teacher about Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” The point of contention was simple: Mr. Richardson said that Julius Caesar was a victim of his predestination. I argued that he had free will. I refused to concede the issue, partially because he refused to consider that my argument had any validity. Mr. Richardson pointed to all of the signs and omens as his evidence that the outcome was inevitable. I argued that Caesar had free will on the basis that he knew about every sign and portent and chose to go to the senate that day anyway.
I was thinking about that “debate” recently because I’ve been re-reading the Elric saga by Michael Moorcock. Through five books the series appears to be a case for predestination. Elric fights his fate at every turn, but still he does as fate requires at every step: at Imrryr, R’lin K’ren A’a, Kaneloon, Tanelorn and so on. He bitches about his fate, laments it, runs from it, but at every step he does exactly as fate requires. Early in the saga he tries to learn the truth of his destiny, but even that he abandons in favor of believing that all is chaos (small “c”), random. He abandons the idea of destiny along with any sense that the universe might have any rhyme or reason (though the text often implies that he knows he’s kidding himself).
Then we reach the sixth and final book, Stormbringer.* In it, Elric is told his destiny and given a choice: he can embrace it and end the world he knows to bring about a world free from the primary influence of Chaos (big “c”), or he can deny his destiny and give his world over to Chaos entirely. Five books worth of fate he cannot evade, but then, at the key juncture toward the end, Elric must choose his fate. Five books of predestination just to flip the script at the end in favor of free will. The small things had to happen, but the big call had to be made by Elric himself.
From the storytelling standpoint, this was the right call for a modern audience. Modern readers don’t like the deus ex machina. We want main characters to make their own decisions, at least the decisions that really matter. Ending a world is that kind of decision.
Shakespeare knew his audience too. If he wanted to give them predestination, he could have adapted any number of Greek plays. They had predestination galore. It seems sometimes that every other ancient Greek story included some character trying to avoid his destiny only to have his efforts come back to bite him on the ass.
Instead he adapted the story of Julius Caesar. Like Elric, Caesar was warned of his destiny, and like Elric, Caesar chose to meet his fate. Still, you could argue that the outcome was the same either way, and that both Elric and Caesar were predestined to make the choices they made.
Me, I think that their informed decisions matter. I think those stories contain free will alongside fate. I could say more about that using the Norse concept of Ørlǫg as I understand it, but this post has gone on long enough.
Which do you prefer, either for stories or the real world: predestination or free will?
*Yes, I know Moorcock later added more books. No, I haven’t read them. I like the ending that Stormbringer gives the series.
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