Monday, November 27, 2017
"The Iliad?" & "The Odyssey?" What Do We Think?
With reference to The Iliad/Odyssey Video, 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 by 2:30p.m. on or before Nov. 30th.
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20 comments:
This made me think about the real life Odyssey that we go through every day. The video said that the book the Odyssey was an allegory for life that we can all relate to even if its not on such a drastic level that we all go through.
"We all follow our own odyssey" Odysseus' life is a reflection of our lives. He meets a cyclops on his long journey home, he pokes the cyclops in the eye blinding the monster. The cyclops' father, Poseidon gets revenge Odysseus. He loses all his ships and men. This myth represents nature and the true colors of men, "Odysseus was a different kind of hero"... "He was brave, he was a liar".. He shows our characteristics such as bravery, a need to be known, hope, despair, and so on.
Guest/host relationships are shown through the actions of Odysseus and his men and Polyphemus the Cyclops, as Odysseus is a guest in Polyphemus' house and the Cyclops kills some of his men, violating the relationship. This leads to heroics by Odysseus, by planning a mission to blind the cyclops who viciously killed his men. After all is said and done, though, Odysseus is finally able to return home after 20 long years, though the reunion isn't as to be expected.
The video makes me look at the different themes of mythology such as hubris. It is interesting that Odysseus tells the cyclops his name bringing about a lot of his troubles. the hubris is a large theme in all many epics.
The video also tells explains how noble mortals are because we suffer death and pain and the gods are less noble because they do not suffer as we mortals do. The gods represent the different emotions and thoughts of us humans.
In the Iliad/Odyssey video, those who are mentioned in the movie as the people who led armies and people during that time, were always confronted with problems that they had to conquer in order to protect and succeed. Odysseus's ego is what punished him in the end because when he had to present his name to the cyclops after blinding it, he doesn't think about the fact that he's currently in the ocean and Poseidon (being the father) will critically punish him for only thinking about himself and hurting the one-eyed beast. Life comes with a price sometimes and this is proven when Odysseus knows that 6 of his men are going to die, but he knows that he must fight in order to save his life and the rest of his men's lives as well. Odysseus can be seen as an inspiration because of what he did and he has the ability to look back on his life while on his deathbed and realize that he had a great life.
One of the things that I noticed throughout the video so far is that with each thing that Odysseus does that will bring pain or anger to someone, he will pay for. An example of this is when he blinds the cyclops, during sea lots of his men die due to Poseidon and when he get to another cave and he and his men mistreat their host so a lot of his men turn into pigs as punishment. And with all of these patterns repeating themselves it made me think if the whole Odyssey really represents the trails of man and how they have somewhat of a down fall and a rise through the journey.
The video made me think about the pride that we tend to have when we're on our "adventures" and that it is not welcome. You should not maintain pride throughout the journey because it is what keeps us back from really completing the journey.
I think that the odyssey video really portrays what real life is like, especially the ending part. It shows that life is an actual odyssey and that when your time comes to pass, you can say that you have lived a full life.
Odysseus's hubris gets him into bad situations often, like it still does even today. After the blinding of Polyphemus, he shouts his own name out, so the cyclops knows who blinded him. He got his recognition, but not the way he hoped, as Poseidon punished him on the waters. We don't fight monsters and brave harsh seas these days, but this still applies to us today, hubris is dangerous for all people.
Odysseus is, in a way, like us. He is both Intelligent and Foolish. he tells the Cyclops his true identity, yet is known to go into certain battles with an intelligent and strategic mindset. kind of like a lot of people I know, he is over confident and lets his ego get in the way sometimes. After everything that happens, it takes 20 years before Odysseus can return to his wife.
I think this video shows a lot about our lives. It not only tells a lot about the heroic perspective but it talks about how worthy humans are compared to humans. It also tells us just about trials and meeting others. It says that the relationships between others is important and guides our journeys. Something else that was surprising to me is the way the humans they said were almost more nopal because they have to suffer and the gods did not. Another thing that stuck out is the way it reflects our life. Its shows the journey, even though we don't go through such hard things as they did we can all relate.
At the end of the video about Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey, it was said that really, as humans, we all try to have our own odyssey and be a little bit like Odysseus, albeit on a lesser scale, which resonated with me deeply. Life is an Odyssey, and we're all just trying to live it well so at the end of it all we can say, "man, that was crazy", y'know? The Iliad and the Odyssey provided the basis for modern literature and therefore the themes depicted within them are seen virtually everywhere, which made me think about all the ways in which it's "lessons" so to speak, are applicable to my own life. Another thing that stuck out to me about Odysseus was his overtly human qualities that everyone shares-- his hubris with the Cyclops, which really came back to bite him in the ass, pardon my French; his indecision and the fact that he struggles to make the tough judgements, seen when he must choose between passing through a whirlpool, or passing by the monster Scylla; and finally his choice to remain a mortal and live his life, rejecting Calypso's offer of immortality to go back to his wife and what not. "Life would be dull if we didn't have some sort of expiration" Essentially what I'm trying to say is that he was #relatable (sort of)
I noticed that throughout the video they used real life situation of today or back then to compare to the Iliad/ Odyssey "We follow our own Odyssey." They also incorporated the hero's journey a bunch in the video. The video also talked about creating your own Odyssey and following your own fate and overcoming hard obstacles in order to return home safely.
People have their own odyssey just like odyssey except ours aren’t as extreme as his. Everyone faces challenging obstacles in their life. Odysseus is very similar to us, he too struggles on making decisions based on his judgement such as when he had to chose between passing through a whirlpool or passing by the monster Scylla. Odyssey’s ego comes back to hurt him when his ego takes over and he tells the cyclops that he blinded him while Poseidon was in the ocean and heard. Odysseus was later punished. Odyssey and us seem to have a long pattern of similarities specifically on moral judgment and emotions such as pride.
I noticed that in the video people would take a a lot of pride in what they are doing also every time he does something like bad he gets something back at him like when he made the cyclops blind Poseidon punished him for it.
The video makes me think that everyone's life can be compared to the Odyssey even though peoples lives aren't like Odysseus's. Everyone struggles with problems and can chose to face them head on or think about them. They face hardships and have good times. I think the story also explains a moral code that people should follow. That moral code being that one should not be prideful. Within other stories we see heroes being punished for being being prideful and we can compare that to modern day life.
Ethan H
While watching the video I notice that they Odyssey is a very relatable story. Everyone has a story and a journey in their life. I think that this is a good story to read considering that it shows hardships and real life problems that Odysseus endures, but he keeps going on with his journey, making it more relatable in the way that we should do the same thing in our own lives.
After watching the Discovery Ed video in class, the Iliad and the Odyssey are about Odysseus’s journey and the Trojan War. Odysseus wanted to return home, but in order to return home, he had to go through a series of tests. Odysseus learned what it meant to be a human being after his journey home. Women in the Odyssey had influence on the men in the book. Odysseus’s journey home wasn’t easy and he had to go through many differents tests to get there. It took him 10 years to get home, but it was only supposed to take him a few days to return home.
A pattern I noticed throughout the video was pride and homecoming. Odysseus had a lot of pride in his adventure when he couldn't help himself because when he was sailing away he still had to tell the Cyclop his real name. His pride was the reason he took so much longer to get back home since the Cyclops father was Poseidon. The guest/host relationship is important and because Odysseus' men were not being the best guests the host, Cyclops, retaliated and starting eating his men.
Odysseus's story is a relatabe story and can be reflected onto our own lives.speaks of pride and hardships that we have on our journey of life.
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