stranger than oedipus rex

Harold Crick's life comes to an abrupt change when he starts hearing someone narrating everything he does and tells him is fate. Imminent death. His life becomes a mess. He can't tell whether he's making his own decisions, whether he can do something to change his fate, or how to cope and live with all of these uncertainties and unknowns. Do we know if we are really making the choice? Harold Crick doesnt know whether he's making the choice to count the strokes of his toothbrush, or the steps he takes to work. He doesn't know whether he's making these choices because fate defines him, and he defines his fate. His fate is just now catching up with him, only he isn't sure if the narrator is making him do these things or whether he is actually choosing. The truth is, fate and human choice must coexist in order for fate to carry out and for his life to follow fate. Harold Crick's life IS his fate, therefore, he is making his decisions, but fate meant for this to happen. Harold must live his life with these unknowns and uncertainties the exact way he always wanted. He does things he left undone; he takes up the guitar, he gets the girl he wants, and he stops going to work. He also doesn't have to count brush strokes anymore, because he knows his fate and he can live with it. Harold can change his fate in the end, because he confronts the decider of his fate. The decider of his fate has sympathy, unlike the case for Oedipus. For Oedipus, the gods are not in his favor, therefore they do nothing to help him. However, Harold, who is completely innocent, is given back his life by the "god" (writer).

Haunted..

So.. I'm kind of new at this, you could say..

Haunted passage:

"This was supposed to be a writers' retreat. It was supposed to be safe. An isolated writers' colony, where we could work, run by an old, old, dying man named Whittier, until it wasn't."

This passage is a complete foreshadow to the chain of events that will tear apart the group of characters in this book. This passage tells the reader what will happen, and pulls them into the book. What will happen to the writers? Where are they going? Will it be dangerous(it was supposed to be safe)? Who is Whittier? Is he the antagonist of the story? Are the writers going to get any work done?

I also just read a short story in this book, and it was very disturbing. It is about a boy who goes to sit on the water pump on the floor of his family swimming pool. His large intestine gets pulled out through his anus and he has to bite through it to swim to safety. This character's nickname is...wait for it... GUTS.

haha.

DO YOU BELeeeeeVE?

determinism, complete free will, and destiny...

As much as people would like to believe they have complete free will to do as they please, they will be unpleasantly awakened when they realize that sometimes, they just don't have control over a situation. They will continue to enforce the fact that they have control, but we all know that they don't. They will be taken over by determinism, the steering wheel of their lives heading in the complete opposite direction of where they would like it to go. Then, they will be destined to do another thing, they may or may not like. All three control life as we know it, sometimes all three equally, sometimes one more or less. I think that peoples' lives are destined to a certain fate, then, determinism changes certain things around by the environment we live in and the people we interact with. Finally, we all have complete free will over certain aspects of our life, but what we think is free will may be, after all, fate.