Finding Meaning in Free Will

The most important theme in the collection is the idea of free will as a source of human meaning; nearly every story addresses this theme from one angle or another. The strongest argument for this theme is “What’s Expected of Us,” which depicts a world in which free will is proven untrue. Civilization rapidly collapses as people give in to nihilism: if they cannot truly make choices, why do they make them at all? Is the choice to stop making choices even a choice? The narrator urges the reader to avoid this spiral by pretending that free will exists. From this basic premise that free will is essential to human existence, the other stories of the collection elaborate on subthemes of knowledge, inevitability, and determinism.

In stories where there is a strong element of fate or inevitability, the pursuit of knowledge...