Understanding Fate and Moira in "The King Must Die"

Fate and moira, at first glance, might seem one and the same. Both concepts involve destiny as it pertains to human life and both quietly speak something of the unknown future. Learning to understand them as two separate entities working together can shed light on what it means to be human in the world.

Though The King Must Die was written fifty years ago, about an ancient civilization, the issues presented in the novel are entirely relevant in the twenty-first century. If we get to know the concepts of fate and moira, they may help us make choices that will shape the way we live. For this reason, it is important to look closely at what the story of Theseus has to offer in regard to these mythical and applicable concepts.

“The finished shape of our fate, the line drawn round it. It is the task the gods allot us, and the share of glory they allow; the limits we must not pass; and our appointed end. Moira is all these” (Renault 15-16), yet “‘Fate is our master,’ […] ‘Yesterday a king, and today a tumbler’s man’” (181). Fate is such a heavy word, dragging with it all sorts of mystical connotations, ideas of witches and soothsayers, that it is difficult to render what it might mean without its baggage, but if it is our master, then we must attempt to understand it on its own terms.

The problem of discerning the meaning of fate has a good deal to do with how society has trained us to see it. It is usually a dreaded thing, inescapable, and unknowable. However, in the case of two lovers fated to meet, the idea becomes one of cosmic force and divine intervention. Both ideas of fate are equally correct, and contingent upon perception.

Another notion that hinders our understanding of fate, and through it the larger concept of moira, is our proclivity to think of time as a linear device in which events can occur only in succession. This conception of time leads one to the conclusion that the events of the physical body, since they are apparently more or less tangible, occur alone in the world. The idea of linear time also lends itself to the false belief that only catastrophic events in our lives are worth being fated. Fate is too just a ruler to lay its finger only where it finds fame. Fate is present in each breath life offers, and what we choose to do with those breaths, in any given situation, will determine the shape of the next. Though it is easier to label actions in a disaster as fate, the force is no less present in a moral decision to help an old lady across the street, or not. Fate speaks everywhere; we need only closely listen.

“Presently he said to me, ‘I wish we always had a man to stay with us.
Sometimes it thunders, or one hears the lion.’ Soon he fell asleep,
but I lay waking by the husk of the fire, watching the bright stars
turn through the heaven. ‘To be king,’ I thought, ‘what is it?
To do justice, go to war for one’s people, make their peace with the gods?
Surely, it is this’” (Renault 60).

Theseus sleeping among the Shepard boys, soothing their fears in a moment fate has offered is as much a kingly act as fighting in any war. Theseus is listening, and so he comes to know this lesson, to accept from life the message it is teaching.

Humans are created godlike. When fate offers its mysteries, how we choose to honor those mysteries is a gift to the divine. If we choose to be cowardly, we offer a miserly gift, if we choose to be brave, an awesome gift. The gods and fate will reciprocate in the same vein. Either way, we offer of ourselves, and what we offer, determines who we are.

To further illustrate the notion that fate resides even in the smallest acts, begging us to push forward to our moira, let’s consider a passage from Theseus on page 25, “[…] we offer to the gods from their own creation; I remembered the birds and bulls I used to pinch from wet clay, and looked at the workmanship in my hand.”

Birds and bulls pinched from clay are humans’ crude attempts to recreate the beauty of nature. We construct creatures from clay just as human bodies took shape from the clay of the earth. The workmanship in the hand of Theseus is not only the crude bull that leads him to understand his place as man, but it is a phrase drawing our attention to the workmanship of the human hand itself. These fingered things that we take so much for granted, are delicate, and fine machines, strong and capable of innumerable tasks, able to work themselves into whatever they touch. It is with these hands that we offer our gifts to the gods and come to know our fate.

“‘It is when we stretch out our hands to our moira that we receive the sign of the god’” (Renault 52). If we have come to understand fate through the gifts of our hands, the symbols of our humanness, and the fate that is our master, then moira is something much larger than fate that deserves to be aspired to. Beginning to grasp the essence of moira requires again that we relinquish our linear idea of time.

It is easiest to imagine these two entities working together if we picture fate in a circular shape. Life is not a linear existence from beginning to end; it is a circle that completes itself. “‘Our ends are written from the beginning, […]’” (Renault 109), which is made possible by fate’s circular pattern. The end is written at the exact moment we are born, because it is the same moment. When our fate touches again the line it began, the body expires. Moira then, is the shell of fate; it is the limitation of movement inside life, it is what we feel when we extend our lives bravely and honorably to the best of our ability, then beyond what we believe ourselves capable.

Theseus is accused of attempting to burst the shell of moira when the Queen of Eleusis says, “‘Yes, go to him, you who want to be greater than your fate’” (Renault 116). It might seem at first that Theseus is being accused of wanting more than his fate has offered, but a closer read might prove that Theseus is being accused of wanting to determine his own path devoid of fate. Moira makes sure this does not happen by drawing itself tightly around the perimeters of fate, reminding us that we are human and only have so much power with such an existence. We are not unlimited, but our limits are often greater than we are able to see. We would not know what to look for to begin our life’s journey, alone. Only by the situations offered us, are we taught to grow and move. It would be impossible to fulfill our moira if we only looked to certain events to fulfill it. What person in control of fate would choose the death of a loved one, or a fierce battle in a war to fulfill their moira? It is the job of fate to make sure we are given opportunity to fill in the circle, through whatever means necessary. “‘See how true it is, that fate never comes in the shape men look for. The gods have done this to show us we are mortal’” (127). Whether we choose to blame, laud, or accept fate in the shape it takes, depends on our perception of it, and our willingness to learn from that perception, and in this willingness become more intimate with our moira.

When we learn from life and fulfill the tasks of fate in such a way that the divine is called out in us, we touch the greatness of our moira just as Theseus made visible in the passage, “I set my hands on the balustrade, and looked along the walls whose roots were mortised in living rock. And as I stood, it was as if all this flowed into me, with a singing sea-surge, and filled full my heart, and lay there like still waters. And I thought, ‘This is my moira’” (Renault 126). We can all understand the feeling Theseus is having at this moment, we have felt our hearts full in the same way, yet we know too that this divine understanding of our moira in a moment passes. To maintain the fullness of the heart, we must always be ready to give ourselves to the universe, to a god, to whomever or whatever calls through fate. It is our consenting to the responsibilities of fate that allows realization of our moira to be possible. “‘The readiness is all. It washes heart and mind from things of no account, and leaves them open to the god’” and in so doing, we “‘renew [our] moira’” (17).

It can always be assumed of course, that fate and moira are simply portions of myth that have no real power in our lives. This might be the case; these are ancient Greek terms almost defunct in our culture, wouldn’t it be to our advantage to throw them out and go it alone? Answering this question depends on the person you want to be and the world you wish to create. Regardless of what name we give it, each choice with which we are presented causes a shift. If there is no moira to reach for while choosing, what is the point of existing? We are humans, and though our bodies give way eventually, they desire to be implemented as the brilliant tools we have been given to work out our lives. Neglecting the divine power of the body’s existence, neglects the force inside the form. Being neglectful of this force, or perhaps worse, being selfish with its power, can damage its existence. “‘When you love your life too much, in the ring, that’s when you lose it’” (Renault 211). When fate offers you a lesson, and you choose to cling selfishly to the power of your life-force, ignoring what it can do if extended, or given away, fate will gore you, and there is no escaping the hollow feeling that follows.

If fate and moira have no power, then we are truly alone. Without our willingness to give ourselves away to these mysteries, we are not human at all, and so neither can we be divine. It is imperative that we accept that we are servants here, and relinquish ourselves to this calling that can be defined only by our actions. It is our duty to listen, to see, to acknowledge with respect what we are given, and to reach outside ourselves to know what we cannot understand.

“‘Why am I angry, then? Is it because I am a Hellene that
the blood about my heart says to me, ‘There is something more’?
Yet what it is I do not know, nor whether there is a name for it.
It may by there is some harper, the son and the son’s son of bards,
who knows the word. I only feel it about my heart; it is a brightness,
and it is pain’” (Renault 97).