Irony

Is it ironic that so often in plays or novels or other literature characters end up saying or doing something by the end that they disdained so much in the beginning? 

Let's take Edmund.  When he is first introduced and discusses the idea of omens and fate with his father Gloucester, he tells us after the conversation: "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are
sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion/knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance/drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of/planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on (1.1.443-449).  Edmund is a skeptic, to say the least. 

His attitude reminds me of Hotspur in Henry IV, part 1, who I mentioned earlier in one of my musings. 

Unlike Hotspur, however, Edmund apparently has a change of heart when he is dying.  Edgar tells him: "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices/Make instruments to scourge us/The dark and vicious place where thee he got/Cost him his eyes," and Edmund comes back with, "Th' hast spoken right; 'tis true/The wheel is come full circle; I am here." 

So...Edmund fulfills his own words.  When he's in charge, fate is something to be laughed at.  When he's dying, obviously "the wheel" brought him to that place. 

How often do we do the same thing?  It's easy to think we're in charge when things are going our way.  However, it's just as easy to blame others when things don't.