Truman Show- Free will and determinism

In The Truman Show, the main character (Truman) is born and becomes central to a 24/7 television show that encompasses every aspect of his life. In other words, his life is the show. However, throughout most of his life he doesn't know this. He is oblivious to the fact that he isn't living in the "real" world--instead, he lives in a set. A very big set. All of the "citizens" in his hometown are actors and actresses, and almost everything presented to Truman is part of an overall scheme to keep him ignorant of his true circumstances. Many would argue that he doesn't have the freedom of choice; the freedom to make his own decisions--that he lacks free will. But I think otherwise. Truman does in fact possess free will, although it is often overshadowed by his circumstances and the manner in which "choices" are presented to him.

When I say Truman is free, I mean it in the context of the Agency Theory, which states that a free act is is an act caused by an agent, where an agent is understood to be a person, or intelligent doer, possessing the capacity of volition. In this case, Truman is the agent. He makes decisions as a result of an agent--himself. In everything that happened, he was able to make a choice. And although his choices were limited in the sense that the producers hoped that he act a certain way, it doesn't escape the fact that Truman was indeed free to make a choice; that he was free.The situations presented to him are just as applicable to us as it is to Truman. If Truman was in fact not free, then every choice he "made" would have to go 100% in favor of the script--the "choice" the producers wanted him to make. But, this is not the case. We are all prone to emotions such as love, for example, just as Truman was when he fell in love with a member of the cast (he thought the girl was a fellow student). After all, we're human. So is Truman.

As demonstrated through the Agency Theory, Truman is free. Because he was in this "forbidden" relationship with a woman (from the cast), we can clearly see that he is in fact free. The producers didn't want this to happen. It was against their plot-line and they tried everything they could to keep it from happening. In the end, they took her off the show. This single fact makes Truman free, although the circumstances of the "television show" situation make it seem that he is only a puppet of the producers.