Here is an exert from my blog post about friday’s class i know i kind of went of on a tangent but i feel i raised some fairly justified points and just wanted to share it more with the rest of the class and to also let them have more broard replies. With a link stright onto the main page of the ning i was hoping i could attract some interest and am happy to hear all criticism and ideas.
Really one of the most interesting part of the lesson was the discussions i had with many different members of the class about the long term and eventual view of the stroy and the Odyssey, as it’s all good and well that Odysseus arrives home safe and sound in the end and has his happy ending, what about his men. As throughout various sections of the Odyssey like Calypso’s island, the lotus eaters and virtually every island and point of rest through out the journey and how Odysseus is always portrayed as the heroic noble one dragging them off the island or wherever where they are quite happy and content where they could live out the rest of their lives on happiness and peace to go back on the journey home. Expecially how basically everytime he only drags them into more hardships and problems from which they all inevitably die so Odysseus goes all thgis way on the back of his men to get home even while they all perish.
I’m not meaning to sound predujice or even against the Odyssey quite the opposite I really like the story, i just don’t quite feel Odysseus gets all the right praise for all the right reason, and the ideas and discussion i had with camneron after clas only took these thoughts futther as Odysseus a man of many skills of great cunning and deception over other men. A skill he is often greatly praised for in it’s use againest the enemy he continually uses against his men to achieve his own means regardless of the result it will have on them, and is praised for it every step of the way. Which as i though this through and discussed it with Cameron it greatly reminded me of another character that we have all been studying in english advance the famous honest Iago from Othello and he in contrast is portrayed in many cases as the utmost evil for being “not what he is” something he shares with Odysseus.
It is interesting as the two characters are so similar in their approaches but are portrayed so differently in seperate stories, as they both are highly skilled in deception and of using and twisting people for their own purposes with no regard or regret for their safety and sanity, admittently for different means but they both take the same approach. How the different cultures the stories are presently in has such a contrast in their reception, and also how each individual authors values can determine for the entire story whether a character and his own personal traits are Herois or demonic.
Cheers Corey
