Most scholars view Oates as a writer of fatalism and pessimism.
My depiction of Oates in the preceding pages is that of an optimist, a literary artist who evokes hopeful possibility amid patent despair and desperation. I have postulated that the tragedy lies less in fate than in personages. Oates's protagonists are tragic, because they make wrong choices. The issue of why they unwittingly choose a tragic destiny constitutes the motivating all-pervasive philosophical basis for Oates's writings. Other Oates critics descry a closed world of fatal impossibility.