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Odyssey - My World by Polyphemus
No mortal or immortal being could imagine the suffering and the humiliation I went through. Before that wretched day, I used to be a powerful immortal with a blessed god as my father. I had no fear for any gods, for we Cyclopians were strong and fierce. Now I am reduced to a weak and disable Cyclops. My eye, my only eye, was put out by a man. A man with the slyness and the shrewdness of a fox although lacking physical greatness. I had a hard time dealing with my blindness and I often swear to the gods that one day I will catch him and have him for dinner. The thought of his limbs and his blood in my mouth gives me great satisfaction until today. That happened ten years ago but my story of the encounter must be told.
I was in my cave, when I first saw them. There were 13 of them all together. A man spoke up and identified themselves as Achaians from Troy who lost their way while traveling in the sea. He then threatened me with Zeus' name, hoping I would treat them well. I laughed scornfully at them and asked him where he moored his ship. He told me that it was wrecked by my father and that they were the only ones that survive. I was feeling very hungry at that time and those men aroused my appetite. I grabbed two of them and started to smash their brains out. I was determined to have them for supper. After an excellent meal, I soon fell asleep and was not awaken till the next day. The men were still there the next morning so I grabbed another two for breakfast.
I went off to tend to my sheep and was wise enough to place the stone back to its position to prevent the men from escaping. I returned only in the evening. I drove all my flocks inside the cave for I wanted to keep my eye on them. After all the sheep had been milked, I felt weary and hungry. I chose another two men to satisfy my belly.
The Odyssey - Scylla and Charybdis & nbsp; One of the most difficult tasks as a parent is to teach your child life lessons. Many have tried, and many have failed. But over the ages, the most successful ideas have come in the form of a story or tale. Aesops Fables, nursery rhymes, and other tales of caution are used even today to teach this common knowledge one must have. In the Greek civilization, thousands of years ago, many children were taught through these fun and interesting stories.
In the 18th century, reading novels served as a pass time and a diversion from household chores for the women. Though formal female education is not developed, the female characters are seen having a keen interest in books, something that was earlier frowned upon for the sentimental content of books might be destructive to societal values. At the time, books were meant to teach and reflect upon the socially acceptable ideas of romance, courtship, and marriage. We find Miss Wharton asking for books to read from her friend Mrs. Lucy Sumner, “Send me some new books; not such, however, as will require much attention. Let them be plays or novels, or anything else that will amuse and extort a smile.” (Foster, 192) Mrs. Sumner sends her novels which she considers “chaste and of a lighter reading” (Foster, 196). We can thus construe that books and novels in The Coquette though meant for reading pleasure, also play form part of the female
Like Jacob, Odysseus connived, manipulated, and deceived. On his journey home from the Trojan War, Odysseus uses his trickster ways to get himself out of trouble. One famous tail was his encounter with the one-eyed Cyclopes Polyphemous. Odysseus and his crew landed on the land of they Cyclopes. They made themselves at home, eating the cheese and goats of the Cyclopes, fully expecting him to be hospitable. Instead, Cyclops began eating then men as though they were animals themselves. Odysseus and his men were trapped in the cave and Polyphemous rolled a stone over the entrance so no one could exit. Odysseus connived a plan and gave the Cyclopes some wine. When he got drunk and passed out, Odysseus poked out the eye of Polyphemous and completely blinds him. Odysseus and his men escape the cave by clinging to the bellies of sheep (Odyssey, Ch. 9). He also disguised himself as a veteran of a Trojan war to Eumaios, a loyal servant, and as a beggar to his wife and son.
In what follows, my research paper will rely on an article by Kathy Prendergast entitled “Introduction to The Gothic Tradition”. The significance of this article resides in helping to recapitulate the various features of the Gothic tradition. In this article the authoress argues that in order to overturn the Enlightenment and realistic literary mores, many of the eighteenth century novelists had recourse to traditional Romantic conventions in their works of fiction, like the Arthurian legendary tales (Prendergast).
...ne by one he eats the men up until there are only 4 men left along with Odysseus. Odysseus tricks the cyclops into opening the door and stabs his eye with a wooden stake. The 5 men escape, as a result for hurting his son's eye, Poseidon curses Odysseus to never to go home, and if he does his loved ones and his friends will abandon him.
On the Cyclops’s island Odysseus and his men are trapped and eaten as food by a giant with only one eye. Odysseus commands his men to take an olive tree and carve a large stake from it. Then Odysseus gives the Cyclops all of their wine in order to get him drunk. After the Cyclops falls asleep they stab the steak into his one large eye, thus blinding him. Now with the Cyclops blind Odysseus and his men cling to the bottom of sheep to avoid the Cyclops and escape. Even though the cyclops checks everything leaving his cave he doesn’t find the men holding to the bottom of the sheep.
The one-eyed Cyclops present a monster with extremely barbaric qualities that the Greeks abhor. When Odysseus first reaches the island of the Cyclops, he is surprised by their uncivilized ways, which are foreign to the Greeks. He describes them as “lawless brutes, who trust so to the everlasting gods/they never plant with their own hands or plow the soil” and explains how the Cyclopes “have no meeting place for council, no laws either,/no, up on the mountain peaks they live in arching caves-/each a law to himself, ruling his wives and children,/ not a care in the world for any neighbor” (9.118-128). The Cyclops live alone in caves, never tending to their crops, and are cared for by the gods. They have no structured civilization or sense of community, and have no regard for one another: they live like wild animals. They have “not a care in the world for any neighbor”, they don’t “plant with their own hands or plow the soil”, and they have “no meeting place for council, no laws either.” The Cyclops seek no comfort of camaraderie. They live by themselves and for themselves, and do not ab...
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
... used the essential paradox of apocalypse and millennium not to prophesy the destruction of the existing world, but to make their readers aware of the greater harmony of the universe, both within and outside the boundaries of time.
In book eight of Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is on the island of the Phaeacians and is waiting to return home to Ithaca. Meanwhile, Alcinous, the Phaeacian king, has arranged for a feast and celebration of games in honor of Odysseus, who has not yet revealed his true identity. During the feast, a blind bard named Demodocus sings about the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles at Troy. The song causes Odysseus to start weeping, so Alcinous ends the feast and orders the games to begin. During dinner after the games, Odysseus asks Demodocus to sing about the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy. This song too causes Odysseus to break down and cry. Homer uses a dramatic simile to describe the pain and sorrow that Odysseus feels as he recalls the story of Troy.
In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, political and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness of man and his future. Mary Shelley is a good example, since she questioned the redemption through the union of the human consciousness with the supernatural. Even though this movement was well known, none of the British writers in fact acknowledged belonging to it; “.”1 But the main theme of assignment is the narrative voice in this Romantic works. The narrator is the person chosen by the author to tell the story to the readers. Traditionally, the person who narrated the tale was the author. But this was changing; the concept of unreliable narrator was starting to get used to provide the story with an atmosphere of suspense.
Odysseus and his men land on the island of the Cyclops extremely hungry and looking for food. He and his men carefully search the island despite the “....instant foreboding that we were gong to find ourselves face to face with some barbarous being of colossal strength and ferocity, uncivilized and unprincipled” (Homer;9;213;216). The Cyclops also known as Polyphemus returns home from tending his animals to find twelve strangers in his cave. He quickly returns the boulder back in the door way and begins asking the men who they are and where they came from. At first Polyphenus shows hospitality to them until Odysseus replies to him with a lie. Polyphenus is outraged and quickly grabs two of Odysseus’ men and bashes their brains out and begins to eat them. Odysseus and his men are terrified that such a horrific creature could do such a thing. He then realizes that will have to use their whits to get away from this creature not their brute strength. He then hardens a stick out of a piece of olive wood and hides it under some dung in the cave. When Polyphenus returns to the cave Odysseus then sets out to ...
During a battle, Glaukos, a Trojan, and Diomedes, an Achaian, encounter one another in a space between the two armies. By chance Diomedes asks who his enemy is. The two men then realize that their fathers were friends. To keep the family friendship alive, the men share a handshake of peace. This embrace shows how the Greek warriors were de...
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defence of Poetry.” The Longman Anthology: British Literature: Volume 2A – The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2003. 801-810.
The controversial subject of global warming according to a large amount of scientists is not a prominent concern. Over 31,000 scientists have signed on to a petition saying humans aren't causing global warming. More than 1000 scientists signed on to another report saying there is no global warming at all. There are tens of thousands of well-educated, mainstream scientists who do not agree that global warming is occurring at all. If so many scientists believe it is not a concern then why should we think any different? Well, a consensus shows that in reality 97% of all climate scientists agree that global warming is an issue and that it is most likely due to ...