YEAR 11
English Extension
Assessment Task 2-
Essay:
“DETERMINISM”
How is determinism been represented in the text’s you have studied + one related text?
“Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behaviour, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.”- Wikipedia.
Determinism. Fate, free-will, predictability- they are all one in the same when it comes to “determinism”. It’s mans attempt to order and explain his view of his world, and to impose his theory and stamp on nature. The film “Stranger than Fiction” directed by Marc Forster, the book “Arcadia” by Tom Stoppard, and movie “Gattaca” directed by Andrew Niccol all have a theme of determinism that can be found between the lines of they’re stories. This essay will find and discuss the points in the texts that represent determinism and what is said by the composers, and what structural devices and techniques have been used to show this.
The movie “Stranger Than Fiction” is about a man named Harold Crick. He is at the point where his life is so reliant and based on repetitive and monotonous routine, and does not snap out of this until suddenly one day Harold is having is life narrated to him by a female voice, which of which only himself can hear. Harold finds (after his paranoia about being crazy) that the voice is that of a writer, who is famous for writing tragedies, sadly, in which all her main characters die. So, given this fact, it becomes predetermined in everyone’s mind that Harold is going to die.
But Harold does not want to die, and breaks out of his routine and comes out of his daze, to try and determine his own life. But, after his story is finished being written, he is told by a literary theorist “Yes Harold- im sorry, you have to die”. Harold is to be hit by a bus and killed trying to save a child. Giving in to his fate, Harold decides to save the child in an act of grace. The writer...