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Literature and its impact on society
Literature and its impact on society
Literature and its impact on society
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Brutality of War
(An Evaluation of three types of violence while looking at the Iliad by Homer.) Violence is something that seems to be simple. It is the process of hurting someone else, but how? Of course you see violence when people become physical, but in reality there are so many ways to look at the word violence. The way people speak to each other or treat the people around them is a form of violence. Every day teenage children go to a place, called high school. They enter an area meant to be used for learning, but instead find an environment filled with cruelty. Girls make fun of other people because of how they look, talk or because they are just different. The boys walk around with an attitude of ownership because they feel they are
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Both Achilles and Hector enter the war knowing that they are going to die. This is the war that will end their life. “Sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed…” Achilles was going to die and there was no way to change the outcome of his life. Hector who was fighting for the other side also knew that he would die in the war, fighting for his family. These men knew that if they went to the war they would die, but they went anyway. Their fate was already laid down. Each day there are students who wake up and know that they are doomed. Bullies have tormented them every day and in their heart they know that the pain will come. They want to run; they want to hide from their pain. However, deep down their pride has stopped them. When they show up at the school after being ridiculed and abused, maybe they will be able to find a way out of their misery. They show up, but their fate has already been decided. The Comics have already chosen what is to …show more content…
For centuries people have used sex has a weapon. When you conquered a city you won their women. The women would never be a wife, but instead they were raped. It showed their dominance and their victory, but in the end it didn’t mean anything. It was used to make women submissive and something to brag to their women. “The other girl, just now the heralds came and led her away from camp, Briseus’ daughter, the prize the armies gave me.” It was never about loving Briseus, but it had everything to do with pride. They wanted to assert their dominance over her and others. They wanted their reward or prize which was a girl that they could rape. Within the wall of a High school, people still see sexual violence. Boys will have sex with girl, just to say that they did. It had nothing to do with liking the girl or anything about the girl, but about the conquest. On the other side women will at times use sex to manipulate men into doing what they way. No matter how you look at it, sex is used to degrade or get what someone
Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad: or Poem of Force” places importance on human interaction, the grounding, empathic, human relations which are rare, fleeting, and necessary. She claims Force to be a governing factor in all human interaction, and the ‘thingness’, which force prescribes to humans, as a dangerous, uncontrollable factor of human existence. In order to overcome force, one must direct all their attention towards recognizing others suffering. In her other essay, “Attention and Will,” Weil discusses religious attention as the most important. She claims that one must practice a passive attention to God in order to reach a divinity beyond reality itself which holds truth.
In “Dehumanized,” Mark Slouka argues that children’s education has become an instrument of production in math and science that will in result benefit the economy. Slouka believes that courses in the humanities are important in children and young adult’s education because it will create a foundation for the democratic society. As a business major, I believe that math and science are the subjects that will create more prosperity for our economy in the long run, but the humanities should be looked at as equally important. The humanities are extremely important for college level students to learn, but young children as well because it creates the foundation for who each person is as an individual. If the humanities are taught at a young enough age, it is believed that the way children will think could be changed, meaning that they will have a more of an understanding for compassion for others and will be more accepting when they grow older. I also believe that the humanities should be taught at the college level to
One of the first portrayals of Ancient Greece warfare comes from Homers epic the Iliad. During the Homeric Age the center of political organization were the households. The conduct of war was based on the ability of the leader of the household to assemble his supporters. However the cost of buying armor and weaponry was expensive therefore only the few wealthy could afford it. This created an aristocratic elite with the mode of fighting being the heroic model, a one-on-one battle between elites. This changes with the social change in the eight-century, where the phalanx will take over the mode of warfare.
The Iliad is definitely a book of contrasts from how Homer achieves PATHOS in book VI, Hector is exposed as quintessentially human, to Homer’s characterization of the Trojans as being family oriented. Pathos is a quality of an experience in life or a work of art that stirs up emotions of pity, sympathy and sorrow. (Literary Devices 1) There are a few situations in book VI where Homer provokes emotions such as sadness. One example is where Hector went back to the Scaean Gates where many women come to ask him about their husbands and sons. “Meanwhile, Hector reached the Scaean Gates and oak tree. The Trojans’ wives and daughters ran up round him, asking after children, brothers, relatives, and husbands. Addressing each of them in turn, he ordered them to pray to all the gods.” (Iliad 1) Many of the men died and this information made the women upset. To console the upset woman Homer urges them to pray to which they agree to.
In this book the soldiers are really fighting a war that they cannot control. They are relying on their strength and strategy to get them through, but what they really should be doing is making sure that the gods are on their side. “But you- exalt him, Olympian Zeus: your urgings rule the world! Come, grant the Trojans victory after victory till the Achaean armies pay my dear son back, building higher the honor he deserves!” Zeus single handedly had the power to change the outcome of the war and he did. He agreed to help Achilles get revenge on Agamemnon. This is one kind of violence that no one in this story could escape from because no one could stop the will of the gods. Cosmic violence also has to do with the environment. The culture of a society has so much to do with the people that exist in it. This means that the violence is almost chemical because people are born and raised with it. It becomes a part of them. In this story all of the men live to fight in wars and show their bravery which contributes to the violence that is shown in the first chapter. Violence is practically inescapable. Could the world exist without violence? Stories such as this one tend to show that the world cannot exist without violence because that is what people are raised to take part
Monsters, death, and sex sounds like an average day for Odysseus. The Odyssey is a book written by a man named Homer. He writes about a man named Odysseus who tries to find his way home after The Battle of Troy. Meeting the Cyclops, Zeus killing, fighting suitors are all examples of what life was like in Ancient Greece. Homer writes about the role of violence in the Odyssey because he wants to show what life was like in Ancient Greece.
Throughout history, people evaluated themselves and others based on moral judgements. The basis of those evaluations changed over time. In the Homeric period, from approximately 1200-800 BCE, people practiced “warrior ethics.” Warrior ethics were based on teleology, meaning all things had a purpose/function in society. The concept of good/bad was directly related to how well the function was performed. For example, a warrior was considered good when he was an excellent warrior and bad if he performed poorly. In Homeric times, excellence was considered god-like.
Simone Weil argues that the way Homer presents war and the use of force in the Iliad, in all of its brutality, violence, and bitterness bathes the work in the light of love and justice (pg 25). The point Weil is making is that by depicting the suffering of all of these men regardless of their side, or strength Homer equalizes them in a “condition common to all men”(pg 25). Because Homer equalizes them the reader can feel empathy, or at least compassion for all of the men. However while Weil is correct about how Homer’s descriptions of war and force reveal justice and love, she is wrong in thinking that justice and love are mere “accents” to the Iliad, and progress through the story “without ever becoming noticeable”(pg 25). Homer not only reveals this underlying idea to the reader through his tone and even handedness, but also through Achilles’ journey. By the end of the Iliad Achilles understands justice and love in much the same way that the reader does.
Change, in The Iliad, appears in many forms, but most originate from the actions of others. It is human nature for men to follow their will almost without any regard for those around them. This unwavering willpower brings change upon the weaker wills of other men. Faced with change, the weaker man’s path is altered either slightly or drastically. From this alteration, man is given choices or must make it himself. Through these experiences, they become more aware or more confused with what goes on around them. Regardless of whether they deal with it or not, they accept that change is inevitable and will continue forward. Knowing their lives are comparatively ephemeral to the immortals, they have the tendency of seizing the day. It almost sounds humbling when they say, “no man can turn aside nor escape…let us go on and win glory
... was when the Greek armies were trying to seize the city of Troy without the help of Achilles , the fight was relentless. With the unfortunate death of Achilles beloved companion and friend Patrolcus, Achilles entered the war with the city of Troy only to wind up killing his enemy, Hector. In all of the fates predicted, Achilles knew ahead of time what the outcome could possibly be, with this in mind, Achilles has the freewill of whether to engage in the war and lose his life. However, fate had been reveal prior to the killing of Hector, Achilles engaged in war with revenge on his mind and fulfilled the prophecies.
In the Iliad, revenge is the cause of many problems. There are main concepts that lead to having revenge in which it is pride, rage and emotional charged. Pride can lead to revenge by disbelieving in someone’s own dignity. Rage can also result into having revenge by making a person become full of anger to the point that they can not hold it back any more. Emotional charged can result to revenge by someone who is very emotional and starts to have a negative aspect to what has happened. In the Iliad, revenge causes problems where justice is the solution to those problems, as seen through Achilles and Hector.
The word violence has many different meanings and has many ways of impacting people. It can beat someone down not just physically, but emotionally. Unfortunately, violence and abuse is not uncommon within families and intimate relationships. Webster 's Online Dictionary says that violence is "the use of physical force to harm someone, to damage e property, etc., great destructive force or energy" (Websters,2014) It includes abusive words, actions and criminal acts that seek to degrade, humiliate or harm a woman or child.. Often, the term violence is used to refer to specific, usually physical, acts, while the word abuse is used to refer to a pattern of behavior that a person uses to gain or maintain power and control over another. This essay
Homer's Iliad is commonly understood as an epic about the Trojan War, but its meaning goes deeper than that. The Iliad is not only a story of the evolution of Achilleus' persona, but at times it is an anti-war epic as well. The final book proposes many questions to the reader. Why not end with the killing of Hektor? Most stories of war conclude with the triumphant victory of good over evil, but in the Iliad, the final thoughts are inclined to the mourning of the defeated Hektor, which accentuates the fact that good has not triumphed over evil, but simply Achilleus triumphed over Hektor. Ending with the mourning of Hektor also brings to center stage for the first time the human side of war and the harsh aftermath of it. We see that war not only brings great glory, but also much suffering and anguish. Homer puts his anti-war views on display.
In Homer’s The Iliad, talk of fate is frequent and influential. While only some characters know what is fated for them, all acknowledge that their destiny has already been laid out for them. Despite the psychological and emotional effects the accepted idea of fate had on the characters, they continue to engage in the bloody ten-year battle. Homer evokes this motivation in the characters to keep supporting the war despite little incentive, through the significance of glory and its relation to fate as an ultimate end rather than a governing force. This leads to the Iliad’s own message on fate being based on a warrior’s form of death and legacy rather than a fixed way of life. The Iliad further poses the question of whether the actions of the mortals seen throughout the text was free-will or pre-determined. While fate is treated by the gods as an unchangeable power, it is referred to ambiguously and gives the reader an open view on fate, leaving the reader to decide whether the often referred to, “will of Zeus,” is the absolute truth for the humans. These gods and goddesses seen in The Iliad are said to act upon in fate when evidence shows their intervention causing actual altering of the characters own free will. Thus, the gods become the direct cause for the demise of many warriors with a serious significance being placed on an honorable and glorified death. Leaving fate as something rather engineered by the gods themselves.
Simone Weil, a French writer, explores the depth and motive of why and how we do the things we do. In this critical review, Weil elucidates the role of force in the Iliad. It is exceptionally difficult to put into words the meaning that Weil gives force. When she defines it, she states, “it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing” (331). When I first read this, I did not comprehend what she meant by it. As Weil refers to force, she uses in the context of war and the taking of lives in the Iliad. This force takes away all natural abilities.