Birth Culture In The Iliad And The Odyssey

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Homer is a classic author known for both The Iliad and The Odyssey. The texts present themes that I claim can be seemingly universal in understanding. I wished to test this out by relaying a scene of The Iliad to a few family and friends. I hypothesized that they will be able to relate and understand the motivations of the characters that are portrayed in the epic. However, I believed that some questions regarding the culture of the characters will arise. I will explore this concept by first giving more background on The Iliad, specifically the passage I shared, and then explain the process in which I went about gathering responses, and then relay the reactions. I used the reactions gathered to try to predict my birth culture’s reaction to …show more content…

I had predicted that they might have questions regarding the culture, or surrounding the idea that Andromache would become a slave if Troy fell. After asking the participants for questions, I then had them convey to me their interpretations of the scene. I then went on to explain my interpretation to open further discussion. Now that I have explained the process I went into; I will relay what I experienced when sharing The Iliad with my birth …show more content…

As Americans, they would understand the militaristic culture presented in The Iliad. They would not understand the idea of elite going to the front lines however. One participant noted that it made no sense for the elite to fight in the front lines because if they are serving their country why put the lives of those who lead us as a nation in danger. Another argument would be that the people in the back like the generals earned being away from the front line. This is just a different way of viewing the wealthy and affluential’s role and responsibility regarding the lives of the people and the military. The overall importance of understanding the motivations in The Iliad and trying to have them understood across different cultures is to better understand our own motivations when it comes to going to war. It is also interesting to share the stories of The Iliad to see what can be universally understood without any context and what still needs context to be understood. I also find it interesting to learn of people’s pre-conceived notions about the book and how their perceptions change after further discussing certain scenes, like the scene with Andromache and

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