Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Homers Iliad :: Iliad essays

Fate and Destiny in The Iliad   The Iliad portrays fate and destiny as supreme and ultimate forces.  The Iliad presents the enquiry of who or what is finally responsible for a mans destiny, yet the answers to this question are not quite clear.  In many instances, it seems that man has no control oer his fate and destiny, but at other points, it seems as if a mans fate lies in the consequences of his actions and decisions. Therefore, The Iliad reveals a man sometimes controls his destiny.   In The Iliad the gods fate is controlled much in the same way as a mortals, except for one major difference, the immortals cannot die and therefore do not have a destiny. Immortals lives may not be judged because they have not and will not die. The gods are able to manipulate mortals fate but not their own directly.   In Book I, the blighter is a settlement of the upsetting of Apollo.  The gods produce situations over trivial things, such as forgetting a sacrifice o r, in this case, insulting Chryses.  The gods have temper tantrums, and they tack sides quickly and without consideration.  One day they protect the Achaeans, the nextt day the Trojans.  The gods play favorites with no sense at all of any of the moral or political issues relate in the war.  Zeus does what he can, but the others behave as though they were better than all the rest, in more ways than one.  They have no benevolence for their own kind, and their concern for man is even less.  Occasionally, the gods will show concern for one of their favorites when he is having a bad time, but it is very rare.  This attitude is the result of their own vindictiveness against humanity and mans own tendency to irrational behavior or carelessness in worshipping the gods.  But more often than not, men vex themselves fighting a force beyond their control.   The opening statement of The Iliad contains the phrase the will of Zeus, and this reflects the Gree ks belief that man is in the grip of forces that he cannot control.  It is also another(prenominal) way of saying that all things are fated and out of the hands of man.  Book XXII shows that the gods control the fates of man   But once they reached the springs for the fourth time,