Wednesday, February 4, 2015
2015 Honda Odysseus
After the great presentations of the Wanderings last week, I got a pretty good view of Odysseus. It caused me to wonder if Odysseus's characteristics would allow him to be called a hero. He was a leader but often lead his crew to their death. Could that have been their stupidity tho? He was a show off and unfaithful to his wife. Or was all that normal and accepted back then? But on the other hand, he was also being diplomatic with the people he came across and very emotional when it came to the topic of getting home. These were just some of the things I noted and I really say that Odysseus could be 50/50 from hero to just lucky dude trying to get home. Maybe all the crying he did is what convinced the Gods to help him in the first place. And speaking of which, a lot of people said that because he received so much divine intervention on his travel home, it makes him look less heroic. Are all of these problems and enough to discredit him from really being called a hero, and if so what should we call him instead?
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I think, overall, I would still consider Odysseus to be a hero. His big heroic trait is his undying desire to get home, and although it's contested in a whole number of places and greatly inhibited by the gods, he seems to hold steadfast and does his best to get there for (almost) all ten years of his journey following the Trojan war. Ignoring everything else about him, I feel like this is enough to justify him as a heroic character.
ReplyDeleteYour title calls to mind a thought I've had before, when I see an Odyssey minivan driving around town. Isn't "Odyssey" a pretty dubious name for a car? Odysseus's long, winding, impractical, obstacle-strewn journey is not exactly what I want to have in mind as I embark on a family road trip! "Going on an odyssey" isn't *fun*--it's arduous and dangerous and frustrating. And all passengers but one die on the way. And the vehicle itself is destroyed, leaving the driver to have to bum a ride home from Phaecians.
ReplyDeleteNext week: why "Trojan" is a similarly odd name for a brand of condom.
Odysseus as a hero is definitely a tough question. He displays characteristics of a hero, his has physical prowess, he's intelligent, and he's just epic in general, but there are also instances when he doesn't seem quite as heroic. But I also feel that is societal norm, that the hero has to be perfect, when in reality I doubt most heroes are.
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