reading their literature? Often it seems, one can read more than just the words written on the page. We can read the feeling and emotion the words represent. Homer’s tone in The Odyssey shows his feelings about the past, present, and future of Greece. He portrays Ancient Greece as being overly structured and rigid. He shows the Golden Age he lived in as being perfectly ideal, and balanced. His view of the future predicted chaos, slackness, and confusion. Through particular characters, objects
The use of violence as the answer to injustice is addressed in both the Odyssey and the Agamemnon. Violent revenge as a form of punishment was commonplace in Greek culture, but its effectiveness varies between these works. Odysseus' violent retribution against the suitors in his house proved to be successful in ending the injustice that was created by the suitors. On the other hand, the violence used by Clytaemnestra against Agamemnon and Cassandra in retaliation for Agamemnon's killing of their
Contrasting the Gods in Homer’s Odyssey and the Biblical Book of Exodus Many authors have employed the religious beliefs of their cultures in literature. The deities contained in Homer’s Odyssey and in the Biblical book of Exodus reflect the nature of the gods in their respective societies. Upon examination of these two works, there are three major areas where the gods of the Greek epic seem to directly contrast the nature of the God of the Israelites: the way problems are solved, the prestige
Telemachus In the beginning of The Odyssey, Telemachus is not yet a man and not sure of himself yet. Embarking on a mission to find his father, he matures from a child to a strong, single-minded adult. Throughout the poem, Telemachus finds his place in the world and becomes a more well-rounded person. Although Telemachus never quite matches his father Odysseus in terms of wit, strength, agility, his resilience does develop throughout the text. In the epic, The Odyssey, by Homer, the young boy Telemachus
is considerably more to her than that. She is in a very precarious position during her husband's absence, and when the suitors begin demanding she choose among them, she could find herself in trouble. Certainly she is aware that her son's coming of age will have ramifications. It would be easy for one, or more, of the many suitors to kill him before, or after, she remarries. It is her intelligence that keeps the suitors at bay and creates some semblance of peace in Ithaca. The weaving and
The Goddess Athena and Homer’s Odyssey In Greek mythology, there are many, many gods and goddesses that the people prayed to on a regular basis for everyday things we take for granted. There was usually a different deity for anything a person wanted to pray for: love, money, children, success or almost anything else one could think of or want. People today are amazed at the number of gods there were and how people could remember which god did what. We study these today but still get easily confused
deeper into it does not do it justice. Each word on the page is significant to understanding the novel as a whole, and it is when one reads the text with this in mind that its true significance emerges. It also helps to have knowledge of Homer’s epic the Odyssey. Without at least some familiarity with the original epic poem, Ulysses becomes impossible to fully grasp. The other tool to understanding it is familiarity with Modernist thought and theory, as framed in the wake of World War I. Though the
epic poems, the Aeneid and the Odyssey, use the after-effect of the Trojan War as a basis for their storyline. William Franke, a professor at Vanderbilt University and historian, constructed this scholarly journal article; The Secondariness of Virgilian Epic and Its Unprecedented Originality, to compare and contrast the Aeneid and the Odyssey, and proposes a theory based on prophecy by Virgil (Franke, 1). Dealing with the first chronologically written poem, the Odyssey, a Greek poem written by Homer
can probably name most of them and count them on their hands with a few fingers left over. Of these, The Epic of Gilgamesh is by far the oldest. The standard version of the epic grandfathers Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by centuries. But what does it mean to call Gilgamesh an epic? By the standards of Homer's outline of an epic, Gilgamesh's tale could be seen as two distinctly different, yet drawn together sagas. "There is a hero of great national or even universal importance in a vast canvas, a
Although Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, is thought to revolve around Odysseus’s adventures, the first four books solely revolve around his son, Telemachus, and his coming of age story. Within Books I-IV, Telemachus displays character progression that is characterized by the celestial work of Athena as Athena encourages Telemachus to break free of his stagnant behavioral pattern, and fulfill the heroic mold left behind by his father. This is shown through the immediate change in confidence Telemachus