The Iliad And Mortality Of Katabasis

Katabasis , or the descent to the underworld, is a common theme found in a diverse number of epic literatures. The hero journeys to the netherworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened awareness and knowledge . This essay takes the convention of katabasis as its point of departure into the literal and symbolic depths of Death and the Underworld within and below the Homeric epic narrative. I will first explore the topic of mortality that katabasis dramatizes, and we will ask what sort of realization this encounter between life and death might offer – or what kind of “gazing” an abyss might be capable to do. Then, the analysis will focus on passages extracted from the Iliad and

The impermanent of human life is the scorching question for the heroes of these epics, and for Achilles and Odysseus in particular. The human condition of mortality, with all its sufferings, defines heroic life itself. The awareness that one day you must die makes you human, distinct from beasts who are unaware of their inescapable fate and from the immortal divinities. Such deep anxieties about the human condition are organized by Homeric poetry into the framework of katabasis, with those of Achilles and Odysseus serving as the cornerstones of the Iliad and Odyssey respectively. Katabatic narratives exemplify the hero descendent to the lowest point of his journey, the nadir, to confront with the abysmal subconscious awareness of Death

The view that life is once-and-for-all and inwardly destined corresponds to the view that death is equally final and obedient to the same law – an unalterable, conclusive end. The heroic identity realizes itself according to the inherent values, which govern the hero in question, and it ended in his own particular death. The heroes was not tricked or seduced by an unfamiliar fate. The power that lures him into his death is originally in him – in Patroklos, in Achilles, in Hector, in all who throught their heroic courage fall into it. What we do discover in the Iliad about heroic identity is that it composed of fatal opposites, clandestine violation of boundaries and laws. All the ordeals of the human condition culminate in the ultimate ordeal of a warrior hero’s violent death in battle, detailed in all its ghastly varieties by the poetry of the Iliad. This deep preoccupation with the primal experience of violent death in war has several possible explanations. Some argue that the answer has to be sought in the simple fact that ancient Greek society accepted war as a necessary and even important part of life. Others seek a deeper answer by pointing to the poet’s awe-struck sense of uncontrollable forces at work in the universe, even of a personified concept of Death itself, which then becomes, through the poet’s own artistic powers, some