Clavis Libri

Theme

Fate and Free Will

How much of a person's life is already decided, by the gods, by fortune, by providence, or by chance, and how much depends on their own choice. It includes prophecy, oracle, luck, predestination, and the question of who answers for what happens.

Aeneid

Virgil

Jupiter's prophecy of empire in Book I, which Aeneas fulfills without choosing, and the scale that weighs Turnus's fate in Book XII.

The Iliad

Homer

the golden scale in which Zeus weighs the death of Hector and that of Achilles in Book XXII.

Purgatory

Dante Alighieri

Marco Lombardo, who grants heaven the beginning of the movements and gives man light and free will (Canto XVI), Dante's objection that, if love comes from outside, there is no merit (Canto XVIII), Statius, whose free will makes the mountain tremble (Canto XXI), and the "free, upright and whole" choice that Virgil hands to Dante (Canto XXVII).

Notes from Underground

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

the offense that becomes fate (Part One, ch. V), independent will (Part One, ch. VII), the piano key and the right to will the fool (Part One, ch. VIII), the chicken coop he does not accept out of gratitude (Part One, ch. X), going to dinner on purpose (Part Two, ch. III), the sledge in which he calls himself predestined (Part Two, ch. V) and the master's will with which he refuses Apollon's wages (Part Two, ch. VIII).

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

the stars of the prologue to Act I, the duel in scene 1 of Act III, and the letter that does not arrive in scene 2 of Act V.

Julius Caesar

William Shakespeare

the stars and the underlings in Act I, Scene 2, the augurs in Act II, Scene 2, and Caesar's spirit in Act V, Scene 3.

Macbeth

William Shakespeare

the prophecy on the heath in scene 3 of Act I, the three apparitions in scene 1 of Act IV, and the promise that comes undone in scene 7 of Act V.