“Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with.” Brodi Ashton quotes from her book Everneath. Is this true for the epic hero Achilles in the famous poem The Iliad? He was blessed with being much more powerful than a typical mortal because of his mother being Thetis, a sea-goddess. Achilles knows he has proven himself as an extremely successful warrior, but he soon finds out he has a double-fate. He knows that if he stays home and does not fight at Troy then he will live, but if he does he will be killed. He chooses to go to this war, so does that make him a hero and did he chose what was going to become of him? You can also relate the quote, by Brodi Ashton, to the epic hero Odysseus from the poem The Odyssey. This man is a brave, strong, loyal, and handsome. He was the leader that didn’t ask his men to do anything he wouldn’t do, and asked more out of himself. This sounds like a hero, but what if you get on his bad side? Odysseus is an angry man, …show more content…
Odysseus uses reverse psychology, with his intelligence and clever whit. You could say he has a very twisted mind, where you never know what you’re going to get. This is a man that could tell you one thing and mean something totally different. He plays with people’s minds as a way to win their trust and then destroy them. Odysseus gets what he wants my using reverse psychology. Achilles, on the other hand, has a very linear mindset. This means that he is going to tell you like it is and be very straight forward with you. When he is angry about his best friend being killed in The Iliad, he is very forward about what he will do to punish the person the committed the act. There is no games with this man, what he says is right and that’s the way it’s going to be. Achilles says what he wants, and he gets it no matter what he has to
When people think of Odysseus, they think of a great, cunning, warrior. Who wouldn’t see him that way, he fought his way through Troy and embarked on a journey back home to see his son and wife again. On the surface Odysseus seems like a genius but in Homer’s, The Odyssey, Odysseus shows many instances where he outwits his foes but his foolishness heavily outweighs his smarts; he becomes boastful after a victory which leads to more hardships, he leaves precious cargo in the open for his brutish crew to mess with, and refuses help from the gods which nearly leads to his demise.
There are many lessons that can be learned from reading Homer's The Iliad. One of which is understanding the stages of grief. One can literally watch Achilles go through all five stages when he morns the death of his comrade Patroclus. Achilles moves through Denial and Isolation, Depression, Anger, Bargaining and Acceptance in the short time after his close friends death.
The subject of Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad, is very clearly stated--it is “the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” The reader remains continually aware of the extent of Achilles’ rage, yet is never told the reason why Achilles remains angry and unreconciled. There is no definitive answer to this question. Achilles is not a static character. He is constantly changing; thus the question of why he remains angry solicits different answers at various stages throughout the poem. To find an answer, the reader must carefully examine Achilles’ ever-changing dilemma involving the concepts of mortality and honor. At its simplest, Achilles’ dilemma is that if he goes to war, he will die. But he will die with glory.
Both Odysseus’s are calculating and sneaky and both commit acts of self-interest but the similarities end there and eventually head down two completely different paths. In The Odyssey, Homer shows that, despite all of his drawbacks (i.e. getting his shipmates killed by a sea monster without their knowledge), he is ultimately a heroic character due to his courage, bravery, sharp intellect and the rescue of his men from Circes home. In Euripides Hecuba, Odysseus is portrayed as a corrupt human being, without sentiment or empathy. He is a self-interested, cruel, and insensitive individual. There are no redeeming qualities about Odysseus and he never redeems himself throughout the play, replacing the thought of the great hero with a dark stain of misery and
“Then the screaming and shouts of triumph rose up together, of men killing and men killed, and the ground ran blood.” From first examination the Iliad seems to be an epic founded on an idealized form of glory, the kind that young boys think about when they want to join the army. A place full of heroism and manliness where glory can be achieved with a few strokes of a sword and then you go home and everything is just lovely. Many people view the Iliad this way, based on it’s many vivid battle descriptions and apparent lack of remorse for the deaths that occur. This, however, is not how war is presented in the Iliad. Homer presents a very practical outlook on war countering the attainment of the glory with the reality of its price and the destruction it causes. He successfully does this by showing the value of the lives of each person that dies and, in a sense, mourning their passing, describing the terror and ugliness of war, and, through the characters of Achilleus and Hector, displaying the high price of glory.
The heroic ideals are found to be the main concept the authors wanted to show in both
Homer's two central heroes, Odysseus and Achilles, are in many ways differing manifestations of the same themes. While Achilles' character is almost utterly consistent in his rage, pride, and near divinity, Odysseus' character is difficult to pin down to a single moral; though perhaps more human than Achilles, he remains more difficult to understand. Nevertheless, both heroes are defined not by their appearances, nor by the impressions they leave upon the minds of those around them, nor even so much by the words they speak, but almost entirely by their actions. Action is what drives the plot of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and action is what holds the characters together. In this respect, the theme of humanity is revealed in both Odysseus and Achilles: man is a combination of his will, his actions, and his relationship to the divine. This blend allows Homer to divulge all that is human in his characters, and all that is a vehicle for the idyllic aspects of ancient Greek society. Accordingly, the apparent inconsistencies in the characterization of Odysseus can be accounted for by his spiritual distance from the god-like Achilles; Achilles is more coherent because he is the son of a god. This is not to say that Achilles is not at times petty or unimaginative, but that his standards of action are merely more continuous through time. Nevertheless, both of Homer's heroes embody important and admirable facets of ancient Greek culture, though they fracture in the ways they are represented.
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.
The Iliad and the Fate Of Patroclus Throughout The Iliad Of Homer, the constant theme of death is inherently. apparent. The snares are not. Each main character, either by a spear or merely a scratch from an arrow, was wounded or killed during the progression of the story. For Zeus' son, a king.
He was being challenged mentally, emotionally, and physically by Poseidon but still managed to save his men from tough situations. Odysseus even told the Phaeacians that “Any crewman who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit, lost all desire to send a message back, much less return, their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters, grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home dissolved forever. But I brought them back, back to the hollow ships, and streaming tears.” (Book Nine, lines 105-110) Odysseus did not give in to the temptation of the lotus plant, and he saved the men who did. Odysseus is also very quick on his feet. He knows when and how to react while in a dilemma. When Odysseus and his crew had to deal with a Cyclops, Odysseus came up with a plan to defeat him. “With that he toppled over, sprawled full-length, flat on his back and lay there, his massive neck slumping to one side, and sleep that conquers all overwhelmed him now as wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet with chunks of human flesh-he vomited, blind drunk. Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers to get it red hot.” Even in a situations where most people’s thinking would be clouded with fear and panic, Odysseus managed to come up with a successful plan to derail the Cyclops. He most likely acquired these skills from battle, which is very
treachery among the Gods that is so prevalent in the Iliad, is nowhere to be
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.
An analysis of The Iliad and The Odyssey show us that Achilles and Odysseus do have several qualities in common, but that they also have numerous makings that show the differences between the two epic heroes. Both of these men are very violent and kill in very vicious was, they are also very emotionally immature, and finally both Achilles and Odysseus are favored by Athena. With all those features in common they also have several things that make themselves stand out from each other. First off, their mindset is very different. Achilles is very linear minded; he doesn’t beat around the bush and gets straight to the point of why he wants to fight. On the other hand, Odysseus is much more deceptive and cunning; he is very strategic and is almost more powerful with how he makes you think and act towards him. Next, their reasons for fighting are very different. Achilles is fighting because it’s his destiny and it’s what he has to do, Odysseus is fighting to get home to his family whom he hasn’t seen in several years. Finally, their homecomings make these two characters very different. Achilles never does get a homecoming, he dies at the walls of Troy as he is fighting. Odysseus, in contrast does end up coming home to his wife and son, that is, after he fights off the suitors that
Divine Intervention is a “direct and obvious intervention by a god or goddess in the affairs of humans”. In various myths such as the Iliad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Herakles, divine intervention was called upon in order to restrain a hero’s destructive or too powerful forces. Although the divine intervention was used to impair different heroes, the purpose to constrain was the same in all the narratives.
Greek mythology has systematically included the intervention of gods and goddesses in matters of the mortal world, and Homer’s The Iliad is no different. The story is littered with divine intervention, with both positive and negative outcomes for the humans involved.