Реферат: Life Lessons

And what is real is nothing, and a man

Is nothing neither…. It is all a dream

(II, ii, 88).

This is the underlying meaning of this play, and thus, the link

to nearly every other play we have read; the ancient Greeks that

taught us of fate, the easterners that taught us that we must

submit to the natural order, the humanity plays that taught us to

have faith in something greater than ourselves (God). Pedro

Calderon de la Barca manages to bring all of these former lessons

together to teach us the duality of this small experience of life

on the grand scale of eternity. Like the Greeks, he teaches us

that fate does exist in death – we will all die; it s an

inescapable fact. Furthermore, like the easterners, he teaches

us to submit to a higher, natural order:

A learned man s the victim of his learning,

For he who has foreknowledge of his fate

Murders himself…, (I, ii, 91).

We are not supposed to know what lies ahead, that s why we are

given free will. If we knew the path we were supposed to take,

we would not have free will. It is this free will that

distinguishes us from all other species; the only predestination

we have is death; our eternity is chosen by us through the

choices we make in this life. This idea lends itself to the

Christian teaching in the humanity plays Abraham and Isaac and

Everyman, asserting that while fate and free will both exist,

what is important is our faith in eternal life and that we live

our lives so that we may die in peace and go to heaven. In

Sigismund s speech at the end of act three, scene one, he

transforms from the student to the teacher when he states: