Slaughterhouse Five and Fate

Billy Pilgrim has virtually no control in his life, and therefore very little free will. He cannot decide when or where he will go next, just as a traditional idea of fate suggests. This gives Billy a sense that, because everything is beyond his control, he should not try at it. What is to happen will happen regardless of what he does. His view of death is an interesting one, though. The Tralfamadorians believe that life is comprised of individual moments. Just because we are dead in one moment doesn't mean we are dead in all of the other moments. We are still very alive in the rest of the moments that make up our lives. But this view is very detached an unemotional. It makes it seem like we should hardly care what happens to us because it would happen regardless of what we think of it. That is where I think that Billy is wrong about people. People are passionate about what they do in their lives, so they must believe that their actions have at least some impact on what happens in their lives. But is that just an illusion? Should we all be more like Billy and not care when bad things happen because our reaction does not affect anything? I do not believe this is the case. Billy may take a hands off approach to his life, but that seems almost inhuman. It seems to be human nature to care about what happens to us. If we couldn't control a thing, people would probably stop trying or caring altogether by now. Because they have not stopped acting emotionally and otherwise in their lives, people at least think they have some control over their lives. Billy's view seems almost pessimistic; he makes most things in life feel inconsequential. However, sometimes the little things that we appear to have no control over seem to mean the most. If we didn't react and learn from mistakes and shortcomings, what stops everything from just happening over and over again?

Beloved's Fate

In the book Beloved by Toni Morrison the idea of fate is discussed more in the sense of what the main character is able to control. Sethe allows Beloved to stay because she thinks it gives her an ability to change her past, or repent the mistakes she made. Really Beloved represents more of a parasite of the past that she hasn't dealt with, so it controls her present and future. Because she gets too caught up in her own past to live a healthy future, Sethe's entire family suffers. She allows a world she cannot control become her downfall. If Sethe would've accepted her past then she could have lived a life void of guilt.

One could also argue that Sethe interfered with fate when she killed Beloved as a child. Her motherly instincts told her that death was a better fate than slavery, but then would it have been fate that she was meant to have Beloved in the first place? And was it fate that Beloved was the one child to die? If Sethe attempted to mess up Beloved's fate then it would make sense that Beloved would come back to haunt her. Maybe her life in slavery wouldn't have been as bad as Sethe thought, so she took away her child's life for no reason. Either way, Sethe's actions haunted her for years until she finally overcame her guilt with the help of Denver, only after it almost completely consumed her. Sethe's fate may have been to kill Beloved, but because she could not forgive herself for her actions it affected her life for many years after. We should accept and learn from things that happen to us and that we do instead of allowing them to linger and affect us in a negative way. Life happens, but that doesn't mean that it's over just because we do one thing wrong.

The Stranger and his Fate

Throughout The Stranger, fate is an underlying issue. When his morals and character are called into question, Meursault stays true to his values. It's as if he was not meant to act in certain ways. Despite what others believe he should do at his mother's funeral, he remains emotionless. But maybe instead of having the inherent  actions, he appears to have more free will. Where other people may have acted in certain ways, Meusault  chooses his own path. When Marie asks him if he loves her, he responds in a more negative way, whereas many men would've lied to be "nicer". But instead of following what is normal, he decides to do what is best for him.

After the murder, Meursault talks about his crime and talks to a preacher about his sins. When he refuses to believe in the same God, the preacher gets upset. So if Meursault doesn't believe in the traditional form of religion, then he could not believe that a higher being is deciding what will happen to him. It does make life meaningless somewhat though. It's hard to trust in what happens if life is all random.

But when Meursault talks about Maman's death, he says that it's not right for anyone to cry at his mother's death. It was her time and she was probably happy. He cannot know it was "her time" if there is not at least a little bit of fate in life. Some higher being determined when Maman's life came to an end, otherwise death could not be "her time". If it was all random, Meursault could have cried at her funeral because she may not have been ready. But if fate determines all that happens to us, how can we have emotion towards any of it if everything was meant to happen no matter what?