"Within hours of the terror attacks, they heard comparisons to that other deadly sneak attack, Pearl Harbor. The president grimly informed the nation we were at war. The nation had not seen a bloodier day on American soil, the commentators said, since the Civil War."
             Were the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, fate? To invoke the concept of fate or to have a fatalistic vision of experience is, simply put, to claim that the most important forces which create, shape, guide, reward, and afflict human life are out of human control. Is this true?
             In most of the readings thus far fate has played an integral part. Do we, as humans, living on this earth really have control of our lives or the lives of those around us?
             In Sophocles' play, as in other works we have read thus far, we encounter an obviously important notion, the role played by fate or the fates. The emphasis placed on these words (and personalities) gives the stories a vision of life which one could call a fatalistic quality. Another interesting factor is that these works also allude to the fact that something or someone is in control and because of this the universe does not operate by chance. In other words there is something out there controlling what goes on. One could call it chance but if we assume that that chance rules all things, then we are claiming that there is little we can do to control our fate and our lives. Further, there would be nothing we can learn about it, since the concept of "chance" is interpreted as what is occurring is quite arbitrary, unrelated to any higher system of order or meaning.
             It is very difficult for us to accept the fact of fatalism but almost all of the books up until the 18th century hold this fatalistic view of life.
             If one believes in fate it would not be unusual to provide some way of referring to or picturing these "fatal forces." According ...