The Three Fates
Stranger Than Fiction
February 12, 2014
Stranger
Than Fiction is about a man, Harold Crick, played by
Will Ferrell, and his journey to change and understand his mundane life. Harold
learns that he is a character in a novel and that he will die. Along Harold consults a literature professor who tells him that he cannot change
fate. What if somebody could change fate, would they? Changing fate is a concept
not new to audiences. Way back in 1985 Marty McFly, in Back to the Future, tried to change his fate and learned that if he
tried it would cause ripple effects and he would cease to exist. Harold’s fate
lies in the hand of the writer/narrator of the film. A writer holds the fate of
people in his/her own hands. Writers
give life and take life; they are in a sense, a god. Only a god knows how our
lives will turn out. Writers are like a god in the fact that they have in mind
the life, back-story, and fate of a character or characters. With a slide of a
finger a whole course of life or years for a character could be deleted. What
if the author of our lives could and would do that. Ancient Greeks believed in fate and accepted
that they will die. Harold is far from a noble Greek. Harold spastic realization
that he is a puppet for this writer causes him to lose his own identity, for
the better, so the audience sees. The Calvinist approach is that we are
pre-destined to go to Heaven or Hell, no matter how much we grovel, we can’t change fate. Harold does not accept his fate and grovels to go find his maker
and plead with her not to kill him off. Harold can’t accept his own mortality.
Harold knows that he has wasted his life on numbers and had no fun. He is like
a man who sits in a bar and talks about the one that got away. Harold’s
groveling to the writer only goes to show the audience that one should not squander
life on tedious repetitious work; go play a Ferris Bueller and take a day off
from societal expectations. As the cliche goes, we have only one life to live, enjoy your life don’t worry about fate. Getting hit by a bus and saving a kid
might be the best thing to happen to you. Point blank, life can and often does
suck, but its what we do that makes it fun. Harold Crick’s fate was written and
re-written because he wasted his life and his maker wanted to give him a second
chance. We do not know our fate and if
we did, would we really want to?
Greg,
ReplyDeleteDo you think that the groveling for his life was actually detrimental for Harold? When he stopped groveling and accepted his fate like the Ancient Greeks was the moment when Karen Eiffel really saw him as a person and, as you put it, rewrote his fate. What if he had never accepted it? Do you think she would have killed him at the end of the book?
I don't think it was detrimental for Harold. I just think it was something he had to do, a last push at life. I think if Harold just would have ignored the voice, Karen would have killed him off. It would have made for a better book, as the literature professor says. If Romeo and Juliet lived what would the message have been? Harold is the poster child of why spontaneity is a good thing. Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween: H20 accepts her fate and faces death, in the form of her brother Michael, and defeats it, so she thought. As the sentiment goes in Halloween, You can't kill the Boogeyman. Laurie Strode accepted her fate and in the end made her a stronger person, much like Harold Crick.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite songs that that deals with death and fate, Don't Fear The Reaper. The song deals with one of the main Christian themes, don't fear death. Our soul do not die but go into the great hereafter. We are not truly death, just a mortal death.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/cKxiLCMb6Q4
So do you think, then, that Eiffel gave Harold a second chance because he had wasted his life, or for some other reason?
ReplyDeleteSo what you are saying is, all work and no play makes Harold a dull boy. I would love to live for the day and not worry about tomorrow but I have a family to think of. Harold didn't, so when he stopped worrying about fate, he won his life back. Carpe Diem Greg.
ReplyDelete