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Recommended: Symbolism
Book V: Sweet Nymph and Open Sea- Close Reading Passages
“‘Oh you vile gods, in jealously supernal!
You hate it when we choose to lie with men⎼ immortal flesh by some dear mortal side.
So radiant Dawn once took to bed Orion until you easeful gods grew peevish at it, and holy Artemis, Artemis throned in gold, hunted him down in Delos with her arrows.
Then Dêmêtêr of tasseled tresses yielded to Iasion, mingling and making love in a furrow three times plowed: but Zeus found out and killed him with a white-hot thunderbolt.
So now you grudge me, too, my mortal friend’”(84).
In this excerpt of Kalypso’s speech to Hermês in The Odyssey, Kalypso discusses the biased manner in which affairs of the gods are handled. She tells Hermês that the gods are
In The Battle on the Plain (pg. 41), Zeus calls a meeting, telling all of the gods that they are not to help the Greeks or the Trojans, but Athena, who is Zeus favorite daughter, says that her and the other gods pity the Greeks, feeling that they will be destroyed by the Trojans. So Zeus allows the gods and
From the beginning, the gods emerged from “cosmic forces” and slowly defined their individual personalities and forms, “their functions articulated in relation to each other” (Clay 105). The authority of Zeus forces the rest of the gods to keep their powers balanced by filling certain niches. In the Eumenides, Pythia begins by singing a prayer to honor the gods. Although she first honors Gaia, Pythia spends a few lines talking about Apollo and his relation to Zeus. When she calls on Zeus, she calls him “the Fulfiller, the highest god” (Aeschylus, Eumenides, p. 112, 17-19). Her approval and reverence towards Zeus is made clear immediately. Even before that, Pythia acknowledges that Apollo was “Zeus inspired” and the “spokesman of Zeus,” thus making him higher up in her hierarchy of gods (Aeschylus, Eumenides, p. 112, 17-19). Zeus is known for his many godly offspring who were all “Zeus inspired”. Along with Apollo, god of music and arts, this list also includes Athena, goddess of wisdom and war. Being made from the same cosmic forces, all of the gods developed their own strengths to fulfil certain niches (Clay 106) At the end of this individualization process, there is the “emergence of a stable, ordered, and harmonious cosmos” (Clay 106). As a result, new standards of conforming and being uniform became apparent through the
Euripides’ plays Hippolytus, The Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis all revolve around the journey of key characters that fail to show respect to various deities within the Greek Pantheon. This disrespect, in all three plays, is met out with retaliation from the gods themselves, thus effecting those that disrespected them as well as their families. To convey these tales Euripides implements many themes, one such theme being divine retaliation. Euripides’ use of the theme of divine retaliation provides a stark illustration of the Greek Pantheon striving to prove their superiority relentlessly and gives insight into their merciless use of mortals as pawns to achieve this.
In the novel, Blue Skin of the Sea, the theme of the chapter is to never underestimate nature.This means that you should never have doubt in anything. One example is that the book states, “The fish market was gone! Waiakea Town was gone!” (page 102) This meant that when Sonny and Keo were on the search of Sonny’s dad, they had been everything had been fine, but as a soon as they had arrived at the sight, the town and others were in danger. The book, it also says, “. . .rows of bodies laid out on the ground covered with blankets. . .” (page 101) This explains that the many people had been hit critically. A few people: Keo and Sonny had probably thought that all the power outage and cell phone services were just a blackout, but it was astonishing
Ancient Greek religion was a polytheistic religion that believed in many gods and goddesses. To Greeks, these gods and goddesses would be able to control everything. Each god or goddess had his or her own distinct personality and territory. “Greek myths explained the origins of the gods and their individual relations with mankind” (Hemingway). Unlike current religions, like Christianity and Judaism, Greek gods were not known for being moral or being truly good or evil. Many of the Greek gods and goddesses were disorganized and self-contradicting. Although this was apparent to the Greeks, the Greeks believed that their religion was to brighten their own lives, rather than give them godlike guidance. The best example of a self-contradicting Greek god is Zeus – father of all gods and humans (Cunningham and Reich 32-33).
Problems, along with misery, become apart of life whether you’re willing to accept it or not. For those who have accepted such troubles, have also learned to cope with it one way or another. Antoinette’s character in “Wide Sargasso Sea” and Celie’s character in “The Color Purple” have both experienced problems with depression, loneliness, violence, inferiority, racism, and self-identity. It is important for such characters as Antoinette and Celie to express their emotions and have a method of working out there issues.
The Greeks in the Odyssey viewed justice as only coming from the gods. They believed the gods punished them because they have fallen out of their favor, and not because they had really done anything wrong by human standards. As Socrates later stated in the Euthyphro, what is holy, and perhaps then just, is what is “approved by the gods.” Although Socrates proved this to be wrong, it still shows the view of most Greeks. Zeus in the opening book of the Odyssey stated, “Upon my word, just see how mortal men always put the blame on us gods! We are the source of evil, so they say- when they have only their own madness to thank if their miseries are worse than they ought to be.” This shows that the Greeks feared justice; they felt it was negative and often undeserved. However, each Greek deserved his punishment because he has a hand in its reason. For example, when Odysseus’s troops killed the cattle of Helios, they deserved Zeus destroying their ships because he had warned Odysseus beforehand not to let the men eat the cattle. When the Greeks disobeyed the gods, they disrupted the right order of things, and when the gods punished them, they made the other Greeks respect them once again, and thus fixed the balance of the world.
Many Greek gods were seen as both benefactors and tormentors, typically it depends on which god or goddess you are researching about. The seemingly contradictory behavior of the gods, acting as both benefactors and tormentors of man, can readily be explained when viewed in light of the prime directive for man, to worship the gods and not “overstep,” and the ensuing “Deus ex Mahina” which served to coerce man to fulfill his destiny as evidenced by the myths: “Pandora,” “Arachne, and “Odysseus.” Humankind and it’s range of vision over the gods beauty and power portrayed them to be benefactors but unseemingly it depicted their affliction towards humans.
The first book of The Aeneid by Virgil takes place in a world ruled by supreme beings. All aspects of nature and life are controlled by gods and goddesses. For example, Venus is the goddess of sex and love; Aeolus is the god of wind; Neptune is the god of the sea. They hold so much power. However, their power is not always used for the good. For instance Juno, the queen of the gods, was extremely angry about the Trojans coming into Carthage, a city that “Juno loved it, they say, beyond all other lands in the world…” (Virgil, lines 17-18) She always had a deep-rooted hatred for the Trojans. She is recalling the time when she fought with them in a previous war, stating that “The goddess never forgot the old campaign that she had waged at Troy
In The Odyssey the gods are responsible for controlling many aspects of where the story goes, but the people still have to choose to go. The gods in The Odyssey are who held Odysseus captive for over eight years. They were responsible for his capture in the first place and then refused to let him go for almost a decade. When they finally decided he should be allowed to find his way home they made it known to his captor Kalypso. However Odysseus still had to choose to leave. Kalypso tried to keep him by offering immortality. "You would stay here, and guard this house, and be immortal" (Homer 267). Odysseus could have stayed but he chose to go. Some say that the gods knew Odysseus would not stay and that is why they decided to let him go.
Every culture and religion has their own gods and believes. We can compare these beliefs with The Illiad and the Bible. We can notice those differences in the character and functionality of the gods. Also with the way humans are connected with them. In The Illiad gods were daily presence in the warrior’s life. The gods had already their destiny planned. For example, when Patroclus died. It was his destiny to die, in his last breath he told Hector: “Hector! Now is your time to glory to the skies … now the victory is yours” Book 16 (Lines 986-987). This is an example of how the gods control the life of the warriors, we can see all the power they have in them. One of the main themes of the book was pride and honor. Those things can be achieved
Religion was deeply intertwined with the culture of the ancient Greeks. In their stories, they prayed to the gods to satisfy their needs and offer assistance in their endeavors, and the gods would occasionally appear to select Greeks to give counsel, gifts, or other forms of aid. Alternatively, if the desires or endeavors of a mortal or mortals displeased one or more of the gods, they would also interfere with the fulfillment of their goals. In Homer’s Odyssey, the gods appear to or interfere with both Telemachus and Odysseus, either to help or hinder them in their journeys. Although the gods are responsible for the difficulty Odysseus faces returning from Troy, they are equally responsible for motivating and assisting Odysseus and Telemachus in their respective travels.
“Gods can be evil sometimes.” In the play “Oedipus the King”, Sophocles defamed the gods’ reputation, and lowered their status by making them look harmful and evil. It is known that all gods should be perfect and infallible, and should represent justice and equity, but with Oedipus, the gods decided to destroy him and his family for no reason. It might be hard to believe that gods can have humanistic traits, but in fact they do. The gods, especially Apollo, are considered evil by the reader because they destroyed an innocent man’s life and his family. They destroyed Oedipus by controlling his fate, granting people the power of prophecy, telling Oedipus about his fate through the oracle of Apollo, and finally afflicting the people of Thebes with a dreadful plague. Fundamentally, by utilizing fate, prophecies, the oracle of Apollo, and the plague, the gods played a significant role in the destruction of Oedipus and his family.
Odysseus is a man. He is not a god, yet he seeks protection and assistance from the gods because he knows that it is necessary. The authority of the gods over Odysseus and the other characters in this ancient epic is obvious. Through out the story, we see example after example of the gods intervening in the life of Odysseus. The story opens with Odysseus living on the island of Kalypso. He is being held against his will. He partially submits to her, but will not become her husband. He longs for his beautiful wife Penelope. The goddess Athena begs her father to allow Odysseus to return home. Throughout the epic, the characters are attempting to find favor with the gods. By making wise choices and being hospitable Odysseus and his family will be graced with kindness and protection. The characters go on living, all the while knowing that their lives are in the hands of the gods.
Favoritism is another theme in the role of gods interfering in the Trojan War; most of the gods up in Olympus favored a mortal on either side of the war. Hera