At a superficial level, the climactic scene of The Odyssey, is very satisfying when considering the hero's journey narrative--the long awaited arrival of Odysseus and reunion with his beloved wife and son is coupled with the satisfying revenge of seeing Odysseus defeat those who have invaded his home for so many years in fast-paced combat. The battle itself causes us to favor Odysseus from a sheer numbers perspective, as we align with the underdog story of the four men who band together to take on the 99 evil suitors. In fact, throughout the entire poem we are led to look forward to the slaughter, as the numerous prophecies and foreshadowing throughout indicate that this is the event that will restore order in the palace and finally allow Odysseus to reclaim his rightful throne. As we dig deeper into the slaughter and consider the events leading up to it, however, the scene itself doesn't appear as satisfying as we were led to believe at the beginning of the poem, with the brutality of Odysseus' actions during the fight taking away from the fulfillment of the climactic scene that we have come to expect. In particular, the dynamic of the "good" Odysseus engaging in battle with the good-for-nothing suitors seems to falter towards the final moments of the poem, invalidating the good vs. evil paradigm, as not all of the suitors appear evil in these last moments and not all of Odysseus' actions can rationally be classified as good--regardless of the circumstances of revenge and "justice." This notion causes us to garner sympathy for the suitors in their final moments, which combined with the logistics of how the scene actually plays out, makes the climax of the poem appear surprisingly disturbing.
Whenever Homer points out that the suitors are engaging in some evil activity or should be condemned for occupying Odysseus' home, we only receive derogatory remarks about a few of the suitors, namely Antinous. It seems that for the most part, the suitors remain hopeful in their desires to court Penelope, but take a third party role behind the few leaders of the suitors. Some of the suitors, such as Amphinomus, appear very reasonable at times during the novel, expressing reluctance towards situations such as killing Telemachus: ""Friends, I've no desire to kill Telemachus, not I--it's a terrible thing to shed the blood of kings. Wait, sound out the will of the gods--that first" (16. 444-446). Despite his desire to court Penelope and as a result gain power and the king of Ithaca, Amphinomus remains loyal to Telemachus as the son of Odysseus, the rightful king. From an outsider perspective, we can't blame the suitors for their advances upon Penelope, as their assumption that Odysseus is not going to return after being gone for twenty long years is rational. The majority of the suitors simply acknowledge the logic in the scenario and decide to try their luck courting Penelope. It is the egregious actions of a few emphatic suitors, such as Antinous, that gets pinned on all of them, tarnishing the image of the suitors as a whole. Thus, when suitors like Amphinomus exhibit loyalty and refrain from disparaging Telemachus and Odysseus, we express a particular sympathy towards them, as the foreshadowing implies that all of the suitors must die, not just the ones who are blatantly disruptive within Odysseus' palace. As a result of this, when Odysseus starts to murder all the suitors in cold-blooded savagery, we quickly lose satisfaction with the situation and instead begin to express remorse towards those suitors who acted respectably but still met the same fate.
Apart from the disappointment we feel in the fact that all of the suitors must die, rather than just the ones who constantly exhibit malice, part of our dissatisfaction with the climactic scene simple results from the fact that it deviates fairly heavily from the contemporary method of depicting a hero in a final battle. In modern literature and film, it is common for the hero to approach all the secondary villains first, slaying them off before approaching the main villain in an attempt to create a buildup from the start of the battle to the climax. In The Odyssey, however, the exact opposite is the case. Often the killing of all the other less important villains is justified by the hero's insistence upon reaching and defeating the final boss, such as climbing up a ladder with the main villain being the top rung and the other enemies being every other rung--to get to the top, one must first pass by all the preceding rungs. The fact that the main villain, Antinous, is killed first makes the rest of the battle seem exceedingly unnecessary and harsh, as this notion of killing the rest of the suitors in order to reach the truly evil Antinous is now gone. Because the end task of defeating the biggest villain is completed so quickly, the notion of building up to the climax is completely forgotten, causing for a very instantaneous depiction of slaughter that throws off the contemporary reader. This notion remains at play throughout the rest of the battle, as the reader simply wants Odysseus to stop killing the respectable suitors like Amphinomus because the main offenders have already been taken care of. Going along with this, another aspect of modern hero's journey narratives that we come to expect in a hero is the concept of mercy. By exhibiting mercy at times during the literature/film, the hero reassures the reader that their sense of triumph over evil has not affected their humanity and regard for human life. Odysseus exhibits no semblance of mercy during the slaughter scene, causing the reader to have reservations with the fact that he essentially just committed mass homicide without even pausing to consider whether he should spare any men, who were defenseless for a good portion of the slaughter. Odysseus allows his desire for glory and satisfaction from the battle interfere with his sense of morality, preventing the reader from being able to sympathize with Odysseus and causing he or she to have very ambivalent feelings regarding the climax of the poem.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Friday, February 3, 2017
Odysseus' Questionable Pursuit of Glory
For the majority of Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus appears as a very crafty and cunning character who finds solutions to most of his problems by out-witting whatever enemy lies in his path, whether it be the gods or some mythical creature like a cyclops. While there are a few instances in the poem where we actually get to see his quick-witted thinking firsthand--albeit even the majority of these scenes are told in the past tense by Odysseus narrating his story to the king and queen--this guise of acuity and trickery that surrounds Odysseus for the most part comes from the numerous epithets that are constantly associated with his name and the various stories that are associated with Odysseus to underscore his keen nature. The classic story that we are reminded of is that of the Trojan Horse in the Iliad, as Odysseus in essence crafted the plan that finally ended the way between the Greeks and Trojans. Despite Odysseus' alleged past of immense guile and ingenuity, the climactic scene of the Odysseus is anything but this. Despite the cunning persona that has been placed around Odysseus throughout the entirety of The Odyssey, Odysseus actually forgoes trickery and deception in the exhilarating battle with the suitors, instead embracing his warrior side. Considering this other side of Odysseus that was respected back when he fought in Troy, the initial aftermath of the battle is still somewhat satisfying, with Odysseus finally reclaiming his palace after 20 years away from home. After the battle, we only really have two major reservations with how everything went down: the fact that all of the suitors were killed, despite some of them acting amicably towards beggar-Odysseus, and Odysseus' brutal act of ordering the women who slept with the suitors to be slaughtered. The former of these can be explained by Athena's unwavering desire for bloodshed, as even Odysseus desires for Amphinomus, a "good" suitor, to live, while the latter can only be explained by Odysseus' headlong desire for glory. Despite the ending of the poem playing out in a fairly satisfactory way that we expected, with Odysseus reclaiming his throne and reuniting with his family, his egregious actions after the battle, as a result of his overwhelming desire for revenge and "justice," take away from his success and the glory that he receives.
As a prominent soldier who fought in the Trojan war, Odysseus' pursuit of glory is natural, just like that of several other characters in the Odyssey's predecessor, the Iliad. The first major instance of Odysseus' desire for glory takes place in the scene inside Polyphemus' cave. Despite Odysseus' sharpness and presence of mind that allow him to trick Polyphemus and exit his cave, Odysseus falters almost immediately after the escape, letting his pride get the best of him while he screams his true name to Polyphemus. What little satisfaction Odysseus gets from deceiving Polyphemus is more than made up for by Poseidon's immense wrath which causes him great trouble for the next several years overseas. In a measly attempt to achieve glory by proclaiming to the world that it was he, Odysseus, who tricked the cyclops, Odysseus' bravado backfires. In fact, Odysseus' pursuit of glory is so apparent throughout the poem that when he visits the underworld (or rather when he describes visiting the underworld to Alcinous and Arete), the ghost of Achilles actually warns Odysseus to not let glory take over his mind: "No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--some dirt-poor tenant farmer who crapes to keep alive--than rule down here over all the breathless dead" (11.555-58). Achilles points out to Odysseus that his own pursuit of glory during the Trojan war was his downfall, and now he regrets the current position that it has placed him in. The fact that Achilles feels the need to tell Odysseus this means that he senses the same desire for glory thriving inside of Odysseus, and therefore warns him to not let his pursuit of glory impede his return home, as it did when he shouted his name to Polyphemus.
Despite Achilles' warnings, Odysseus actions in the battle scene with the suitors, and especially the aftermath when he order the women to be slaughtered, still follow a path of glory and honor that he was warned about. We can observe Odysseus' initial greed for glory in the scene in book 21 when Telemachus is stringing the bow for the contest that Penelope has contrived. After his third attempt, it appears as if Telemachus will actually be able to prove his strength by stringing his father's bow and passing the arrow through all the axe heads, but Odysseus quickly shuts down Telemachus' moment of glory, insisting that if Telemachus succeeded in the competition, it would take away from Odysseus' feat. While this particular scene is in part to preserve Odysseus' disguise as a beggar, we can still observe the dynamic between father and son in which Odysseus has to appear above Telemachus and the other suitors, achieving glory by showing the rest of them up. This tendency of Odysseus to prove himself in competition is also apparent in book 8, when he boasts that he can beat all of the men in any contest but running, and takes immense pride in his victory. The truly egregious act that causes us to reconsider Odysseus as a hero comes after the battle is over, when Odysseus orders for the slaughter of the 12 disloyal women in his palace: "And once you've put the entire house in order, march the women out of the great hall--between the roundhouse and the courtyard's strong stockade--and hack them with your swords, slash out all their lives--blot out of their minds the joys of love they relished under the suitors' bodies, rutting on the sly!" (22.465-470). Despite already having killed all the suitors, Odysseus feels he must go further to satisfy his desire for revenge. In doing this, Odysseus relishes in an act of horrifying nature, eagerly directing Telemachus to slaughter the unfaithful women in gory detail, simply for sleeping with the greedy suitors. It is Odysseus' sadistic orders and brutal concept of "justice" that cause us to question his morality as a hero at this point in the poem. He has already completed the heroic task of expelling the suitors from his home (by killing them) but feels that me must extend his glory even further by exacting justice and revenge upon even the women who are associated with them. We can observe a strong parallel to the Iliad between Odysseus' actions at this point of the poem and those of Achilles. After his epic fight with Hector, Achilles decides that simply defeating Troy's greatest warrior isn't enough to sate his desire for glory, and thus proceeds to humiliate Hector by tying his dead body to a chariot and dragging it around all of Troy so that everyone will know of his victory. Odysseus' actions with the slaughter of the women--who, importantly, were unarmed and weren't even present when the battle occurred--appear in a similar light, as the killing seems very after-the-fact and unnecessary, simply to prove a point and give him a stronger sense of satisfaction, rather than actually do anything to impact the battle. Thus, Odysseus' radical actions towards the end of the poem occur as a result of his extensive desire for glory, just as Achilles and so many other characters from Greek and Roman mythology, and cause us to reconsider Odysseus' position as the "good guy" hero in the poem.
As a prominent soldier who fought in the Trojan war, Odysseus' pursuit of glory is natural, just like that of several other characters in the Odyssey's predecessor, the Iliad. The first major instance of Odysseus' desire for glory takes place in the scene inside Polyphemus' cave. Despite Odysseus' sharpness and presence of mind that allow him to trick Polyphemus and exit his cave, Odysseus falters almost immediately after the escape, letting his pride get the best of him while he screams his true name to Polyphemus. What little satisfaction Odysseus gets from deceiving Polyphemus is more than made up for by Poseidon's immense wrath which causes him great trouble for the next several years overseas. In a measly attempt to achieve glory by proclaiming to the world that it was he, Odysseus, who tricked the cyclops, Odysseus' bravado backfires. In fact, Odysseus' pursuit of glory is so apparent throughout the poem that when he visits the underworld (or rather when he describes visiting the underworld to Alcinous and Arete), the ghost of Achilles actually warns Odysseus to not let glory take over his mind: "No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--some dirt-poor tenant farmer who crapes to keep alive--than rule down here over all the breathless dead" (11.555-58). Achilles points out to Odysseus that his own pursuit of glory during the Trojan war was his downfall, and now he regrets the current position that it has placed him in. The fact that Achilles feels the need to tell Odysseus this means that he senses the same desire for glory thriving inside of Odysseus, and therefore warns him to not let his pursuit of glory impede his return home, as it did when he shouted his name to Polyphemus.
Despite Achilles' warnings, Odysseus actions in the battle scene with the suitors, and especially the aftermath when he order the women to be slaughtered, still follow a path of glory and honor that he was warned about. We can observe Odysseus' initial greed for glory in the scene in book 21 when Telemachus is stringing the bow for the contest that Penelope has contrived. After his third attempt, it appears as if Telemachus will actually be able to prove his strength by stringing his father's bow and passing the arrow through all the axe heads, but Odysseus quickly shuts down Telemachus' moment of glory, insisting that if Telemachus succeeded in the competition, it would take away from Odysseus' feat. While this particular scene is in part to preserve Odysseus' disguise as a beggar, we can still observe the dynamic between father and son in which Odysseus has to appear above Telemachus and the other suitors, achieving glory by showing the rest of them up. This tendency of Odysseus to prove himself in competition is also apparent in book 8, when he boasts that he can beat all of the men in any contest but running, and takes immense pride in his victory. The truly egregious act that causes us to reconsider Odysseus as a hero comes after the battle is over, when Odysseus orders for the slaughter of the 12 disloyal women in his palace: "And once you've put the entire house in order, march the women out of the great hall--between the roundhouse and the courtyard's strong stockade--and hack them with your swords, slash out all their lives--blot out of their minds the joys of love they relished under the suitors' bodies, rutting on the sly!" (22.465-470). Despite already having killed all the suitors, Odysseus feels he must go further to satisfy his desire for revenge. In doing this, Odysseus relishes in an act of horrifying nature, eagerly directing Telemachus to slaughter the unfaithful women in gory detail, simply for sleeping with the greedy suitors. It is Odysseus' sadistic orders and brutal concept of "justice" that cause us to question his morality as a hero at this point in the poem. He has already completed the heroic task of expelling the suitors from his home (by killing them) but feels that me must extend his glory even further by exacting justice and revenge upon even the women who are associated with them. We can observe a strong parallel to the Iliad between Odysseus' actions at this point of the poem and those of Achilles. After his epic fight with Hector, Achilles decides that simply defeating Troy's greatest warrior isn't enough to sate his desire for glory, and thus proceeds to humiliate Hector by tying his dead body to a chariot and dragging it around all of Troy so that everyone will know of his victory. Odysseus' actions with the slaughter of the women--who, importantly, were unarmed and weren't even present when the battle occurred--appear in a similar light, as the killing seems very after-the-fact and unnecessary, simply to prove a point and give him a stronger sense of satisfaction, rather than actually do anything to impact the battle. Thus, Odysseus' radical actions towards the end of the poem occur as a result of his extensive desire for glory, just as Achilles and so many other characters from Greek and Roman mythology, and cause us to reconsider Odysseus' position as the "good guy" hero in the poem.
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