Fate versus Free Will Essay

Franklin D Roosevelt, a president so popular he served four terms, once said “Men are not prisoners of fate but rather of their own minds.” By this he meant that our decisions and our actions are not decided by some higher power, of which we have no knowledge of, but rather of our own flawed minds. Any bad decisions you make were not “destined” to be done by you, they were simply made by you and you have to accept the repercussions of your decisions. Fate did not make the choices for Romeo or Juliet, and fate has never “made” choices for anyone. Fate did not drive the knife into Juliet's heart or force Romeo to drink the poison. The deaths were caused by free will and it alone

All of this could have been prevented if those around Romeo and Juliet, such as Capulet, had made separate choices and also Romeo and Juliet themselves, had made different choices. If Romeo and Mercutio had made a simple choice to not crash the party, Romeo would have never met Juliet and both of their lives would have gone on normally. If Capulet had chosen not to advance the date of the wedding the Friars letter would have been delivered to Romeo on time and all would have gone perfectly as planned. They could have simply chosen to live their lives normally and try to forget about each other. Although harder for Romeo, due to his complete infatuation with Juliets looks, both of their lives would have gone on, instead of being abruptly ended in a very tragic way. Juliet would have went on to marry Paris and although she would be sad at first, motherhood would likely bring her happiness. Romeo would have moved on to another girl after Rosaline, like he did with Juliet so quickly, and his new life would have been just as happy as Juliets, with both of them never knowing the others face or their undiscovered love.

One may say that fate made them come up to that point and be in that position, a position in which there was no other choice but suicide. I however, believe that the situation they got into was decided by the choices and actions they made. Their situation could have easily been solved by other choices being made by them and those around them, such as Capulet leaving the wedding date unchanged.