Monday, December 2, 2013
"The Iliad?" "The Odyssey?"
With reference to The Iliad/Odyssey, what did it make you
contemplate regarding archetypal patterns? Homecoming? Pride? The hero?
Divinities? Heroic Code? Guest/Host? Hubris? Other? Please quote from
either text or the video. Please complete this blog response during
class today.
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22 comments:
The video made me think about the archetyple pattern of homecoming the most. In the video it said "every homecoming is special whether it be from a dangerous journey or just a normal outing." I think this is true, especially in the case of odysseus because his journey was long and dangerous and so much had changed at home before he got there so his homecoming meant reclaiming what was his. The video also showed how the greek gods and goddesses played a tough role in the successes and failures of Odysseus. Through all the hardships, in the end there was triumph.
Watching this video presentation of Odysseus and his journies showed me what a true hero possesses. Odysseus may not have been a perfect man nor hero but he gave his all. A hero honors his code and his guests. When his men act rudely at a guests table, they are turned into swine. A hero respects the divinities but challenges them when necassary. Odysseus displays many good and bad qualities such as keen wit, but a growing ego.
The depth to the homecoming of a hero was what hit me most. I never thought of homecoming as being an exceptance of your journey. It is the relief of having no more challenges or of seeing loved ones, but it is also the final lessons learned or final step of looking back at all that happened on this journey. For Odysseus, he is able to look back and realize all he overcam and motivates him to except and be happy with his mortal life. One of the professors from the film said, "Odysseus is now able to choose how to live and how to die, but also look back on his life and say that he realy lived." I completely agree with him. Homecoming has a much deeper meaning than I ever thought it would.
The video on the Iliad and the Odyssey made me contemplate pride and homecoming because we dont realize how much we see these things in literature and movies. It occurs all of the time. I had never stopped to think that Indianna Jones has the same traits as Odyseus in his struggles to take things. Just like Odyseus had to overcome decisions and struggles of his own.
This made me think about how greek mythology in the iliad or the odyssey is potryrayed in every day activities or instances. For most emotions your feel or places you go or nature you look at there was a greek god that had resembled it. Homecoming is somthing that had been valued ever since time we still do it now adays with troops coming home all the way to school dances. The odyssey is abour adventures which we somtimes call lif today, the greek gods expierinced odysseys such as the mortals. It just mean that it was a life worth living full of excitment and good to bad times. The moral of the Iliad and the Odyssey are still passed today.
The Iliad/Odyssey reminds me of heroic code by not violating it. Odysseus never once was very hubris or over the top with his pride. He also denied the offer of becoming immortal to the gods because he just wanted to stay human and not live a life of immortality. Even when he returned from his journey he didn’t come back and be very prideful of what he had just accomplished, instead (with the warning of Hera) he came back dressed like a beggar (which is low in society) because he wanted to win his wife's love again. In the movie the queen asked the suitors to string the bow that belonged to her husband and shoot it through 12 arrows, instead of shoving his way to the front and being very rude about how its his bow he waited his turn and when it became time Odysseus strung the bow and shot it.
I did not really contemplate much. The Illiad/Odysey seem to be quite straight forward in a sense that it is relatable to many aspects of life as we know it today. The homecoming aspect is what helps me understand the correlation between the poem and real life. The movie said it very well, the woman talking says that coming home is such a relief especially if you had a long and hard trip away or even a casual one. We know many who come back from wars or people coming back from college which helps us to understand the feeling when the king of Troy came back for his beautiful wife.
While I was watching this video, I was thinking most about what it takes to be a hero and the trials one must go through to be named as high as Achilles or Odysseus. What I thought was that in order to be a hero, one must have the mental knowledge to be above the rest and the physical strength to enforce it. The choices must always be right or the title “hero” could be gone in a moment. The other part of being a hero that caught my mind was the mortal aspect. Athena was not the hero because “She did not feel the pain…” that either of the heros indulged.
The Iliad/Odyssey revealed more of a mortal side to a great hero. During his journey, he had to realize that living, is more important than being immortal in any sense of the word. Odysseus was different than the other heroes in that way, he only wanted to go home at that point to his wife, and his kingdom.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus is full of pride. He shows this when he travels around to different destinations. The place where I see it the most is at the cyclops cave. He and his men do not have a good guest/host relationship with polyphemus, resulting in the scorching of polyphemus' eye. When they get to the ship and run away, Odysseus has much pride and boasts about his actual name.
At the end of the video, the lady talked about how we still celebrate homecomings today, and I agree with that. Odysseus has to disguise himself when he returns home, but eventually it is celebrated that their king is back.
The video made me thing about the pattern of the guest host relationship. There is violations of the guest/host relationship in both stories. In the Illiad Paris takes Helena who is Menelaus's wife, so Paris was not a good guest to Menelaus. In the Odyssey Odysseus's house if filled with suitors that are poor guests that are unkind to him when he appears before them as a beggar.
The video made me think about the pattern of Hubris because in the story they believe they can defeat anything and that leads to a lot of deaths. This is a thing that appears many times in the Illiad and in many different stories.
The Odyssey is one of the greastest told stories in all of greek mythology. Though he is only pushed forward by one goddess, Athena, he still encounters all the others in various ways. The gods are very sensitive however so when the greeks didnt give the gods their right to appreciation. "they forhot what was due to the gods; and on their voyage home they were terribly punished."
The iliad demonstratesthe breaking of th guest host relationship that is required between two people when one is in anothers home. "Each was bound to help and never harm the other." Paris however had decieved Menelaus and ended up stealing his wife.
The Illiad really made me think about the the relationships between the greek divinitys. It seemed that the war that was fought was more about gods fighting gods than humans fighting humans. And the Odyssey made me think of homecoming. The whole poem is about the hero coming home and even when faced with great obsticles or urges he overcame them to get back home.
One thing that I learned while reading “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” is that the gods were very involved in the hero’s adventures. In the epic of “The Iliad” Athena helps Odysseus on his adventures by giving him advice as well as directly helping him while Poseidon tends to try to slow down his journey and send obstacles Odysseus’s way with a few being the Hydra, the multiple-headed serpent, and the Sirens, whose singing seduces anyone who hears them.
One of the main patterns seen within the Iliad/Odyssey is pride. It is especially seen in the Iliad within each side/rival (The Greeks and the Trojans). When given the chance to turn and flee neither side is willing to give up. Specifically, the character Hector, knowing that he will surely die if he stays to fight, does not turn and flee to the city because of the great pride that he has. Often, it is seen too, that the mortals are drawn into conflict based upon conflict of the gods. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods dictate the fortune or misfortune of the mortals. Specifically, Athena is often behind the journey of Odysseus and the trials that he goes through.
The patterns mostly found in the archetype of hubris is that all heroes are a bit hubris. The sons of Zeus that became heroes are cocky like their father and other heroes that have a relationship with the gods are hubris because the gods that are around them are also hubris. The heroes also in a way have a right to brag a bit about what they did. Most of the heroes did something that only a god or immortal could do and they defied that rule.
In the Illiad/Odyssey what I found most interesting was the main ideas of homecoming and heroic code. Odysseus faces many challenges that eventually show his true character. He makes mistakes like loosing men or being a bad guest, but this only shows that he's human. I also found is interesting how he eventually decided being immortal really isn't worth it. I think all his suffering and him choosing to be mortal really shows the value he found in life. Another interesting idea was the idea of coming home. Odysseus experiences and understands the beauty of coming home to who he loves and where he's comfortable. So overall, the story overall shows that there eventually joy in suffering.
The Iliad and the clip we watched of the Odyssey made me think about how the heros always endure horrible things that don’t happen to everyday normal people. Because Odysseus, Hector, and Achilles go through challenges that show what kind of person they are inside. An example is how Odysseus chooses the path of the seven headed serpent which would take seven of his men rather than the whirlpool which would probably kill them all. This shows that Odysseus had to face the challenge of sacrifice and possibly that he was selfish since he knew that with the serpent he himself would have a chance of living. But on the other hand Odysseus had a good chance of dying in the whirlpool. Also both the text and clip showed that women do nothing but, “give birth and set their hero off to their journey,” (Odyssey Clip). This is illustrated with Hector’s wife who gives birth to his children and then later see’s her husband off to the Trojan War. Meanwhile, in the Odyssey, Odysseus’ wife sits around waiting for her husband to come back to her because since she is a women she was not allowed to journey with her husband. Therefore, there is lots of ways in which the Iliad and Odyssey are similar and very little in their difference.
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