The poem begins with four books telling of a future hero, Odysseus's son Telemachus. Telemachus has his father's gift of speech and some of his courage, but needs Athena's encouragement before he ventures forth. Athena makes explicit Odysseus's excellence. Posing as Mentor, she marvels "now there was a man, I'd say, in words and actions both!" (102). Many Greek heroes are men of action, a few others skilled in counsel, but few combine the two like Odysseus. As Telemachus relates it, people say that Odysseus pledged his word and "made it good in action" on the battlefield (110). Telemachus wishes that his father could have had a good death in battle, or in old age at home, either of which would mean great fame for the Greek hero. Instead, he…
information which he obtained from the Old man of the sea to the reader. The…
Due to gender difference the society places men and women in unequal positions. Men are considered superior and capable of being leaders while women are considered inferior to their male counterparts. Traditionally, it was assumed that women were incapable of reasoning but were endowed with the capability of nurturing the society. It was also believed that the position of women…
Reading Response 1 When confronting issues of masculinity, one must defend their ideologic view of how a man should act in society. Certain types of appeals, created by the greek philosopher Aristotle, are most likely to prove the general efficacy of the defendant’s argument. These appeals include logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos. To consider which of these appeals is the most effective for proving demonstrable qualities of masculinity, one must take into consideration the time the argument is being presented. The timeliness of the argument can be directly paralleled to the appeal kairos.…
The first four books, other wise known as the Telemachy, is able to prepare the readers for the story of Odysseus as it gives background information on the characters and foreshadows what is to come in the books ahead. Foreshadowing is prevalent throughout the epic and the journey's in it. In the case of Agamemnon, his life is ultimately ended in the hands of his wife and the suitor she had chosen. His son's revenge can foreshadow and parallel to what Telemachus and his journey may bring ahead. The story of Orestes (Agamemnon's son) and the vindication for his father, "Orestes killed the snake that killed his father. He gave his hateful mother and her soft man a tomb together, and proclaimed a festival day for all the Argive people." (44), brings to light the similarities between Telemachus and Orestes.…
In every man’s life he starts out as a boy and needs to journey and change into a man. Telemachus also has to do this in the Odyssey and it is especially tough because he does not have a father to follow in the footsteps of for most of his life. Telemachus starts off shy and showing his emotions too much, wishing he could see his father. He then starts making decisions to put himself into a leadership role and is maturing. Then in the end he matured and grew and is ready to fight by his father’s side against the suitors to take back their home. Telemachus had journeyed from being shy, to leading and fighting beside his father.…
At the start of The Odyssey, Odysseus has yet to return from the Trojan War and his son Telemachus believes that he is dead. Suitors have occupied his home during this time and are pressuring Odysseus’ wife Penelope to marry one of them. Meanwhile, Telemachus is unable to do anything without his father. Athena, disguised as an old friend of Odysseus’ named Mentor, encourages Telemachus to seek news of his father. At the end of the conversation, Telemachus is aware that he was in the presence of a god but doesn’t know what god is helping him. He plans to visit the kingdoms of some of Odysseus’ war companions in hopes of finding his father’s whereabouts. Book II opens with Telemachus calling an assembly of all of Ithaca’s men, including the suitors, and for the first time Telemachus publicly denounces the suitors and makes clear their crimes to all the men of Ithaca. However, the suitors maintain throughout the conversation they are innocent and have done no wrong.…
In The Odyssey, the reader is easily able to distinguish that Odysseus is a hero in the story. He is a god-like figure. Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, is a hero and seen by many readers as such especially females. Both possess characteristics of heroes and they deserve to be considered such but that does not mean that they are the true hero of the story. Their son Telemachus is the true hero in The Odyssey. The reader should be able to identify with him the most and realize everything that has happened in his life and he deals with it with extreme heroism. He handles the situation in his life the way every human being should.…
Was the development of gender inequality natural or was it created by early humans? That is a question that scholars studying global history are still asking today. Although gender in global history has been explored recently, it is clear that woman’s political and social status was usually inferior in most literate civilization of the classical period as we know from Hughes essay. But the question is, was gender inequality a natural occurrence or was it developed in early literate civilizations? That is a question that even prominent scholars cannot answer.…
The question of what it takes to become a man is one that has existed for millennia. Naturally the answer to that question changes, often significantly, depending on where one asks. Even in mythology, this is a popular subject, and shown very clearly in Homer’s epic The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid. While both tales focus on fathers, the stories of their sons also hold great importance, and each of the sons has a coming of age story within their father’s. But for the Greeks and soon-to-be Romans, becoming a man can mean slightly different things. Telemachus, the son of the great Odysseus, has to learn, for the most part, to become a man in the absence of his father. The son of Aeneas, Iulus, also grows up in the midst of trouble and war.…
Metaphysics is defined as “The study or theory of reality; sometimes used more narrowly to refer to transcendent reality, that is, reality which lies beyond the physical world and cannot therefore be grasped by means of the senses.” It simply asks what is the nature of being? Metaphysics helps us to reach beyond nature as we see it, and to discover the `true nature' of things, their ultimate reason for existing.…
In society, gender is a structure that divides work in the home and economic production which then creates those in authority and organizes sexuality (Lorber 1994). Even in societies where there are less defined gender boundaries there is still separation between genders. This spatial separation of men and women does reinforce the gendered difference, identity, and behavior (Lorber 1994). This spatial separation seems to have progressed throughout human evolution from chimpanzees to modern day humans where gender roles were clearly defined. This paper is to analyze the difference between men and women in terms of social behavior as not the result of biological variation but of cultural and environmental development from our ancestors.…
The statement argues that Aristotle’s theory of the four causes is impossible to apply to everyday life and cannot be applied to the real world. Aristotle believed there are four causes that determine what things are and their purpose and claims this is how we differentiate one thing from another. These four causes are known as the material cause, the efficient cause, the formal cause and most importantly for Aristotle, the final cause, and these together describe how ‘things’ transform from the state of actuality to potentiality. To some extent the theory of the four causes could be accurate and plausible, however, some of the ideas behind it is flawed and unrealistic. In this essay I will cover the three main faults of Aristotle’s theory. Namely, its lack of clarity, that the theory is based on assumptions and that there is no evidence to support the existence of the prime mover.…
“Modern science has freed people’s consciousness from many myths, having shown them to be illusory and politically partisan. For instance, no one would now dare to claim that one race or nationality is superior to another, that a particular religion is the only true one, or that a certain political system is the only possible one. However, a number of stereotypes remain unchanged” (Kliuchko 16). These stereotypes are generalizations about gender attributes and the role of an individual, which authors use to describe and evaluate the behaviors of their characters. I’ll be comparing and contrasting gender stereotypes in “a sorrowful woman” by Gayle Godwin and “Separating” by John Updike. The division of labor according to gender leads to stereotypes that rationalize the division of labor. For example, because women disproportionately occupy roles that require nurturing behavior, people come to see women as a group as more nurturing. Men’s overrepresentation in positions of status and power leads to stereotypes of men as independent and agentic. Importantly, the consequences of gender stereotypes are not limited to the perception of others (Ryan et al 2004).…
While there have been changes in the male gender, the representation of females continues to stay the same just as it was in Ancient Greece. In 420 to 348 B.C. Plato’s Timaeus addressed the distinct sexual differences and desires between males and females through a gender-biased perspective. Timaeus mentioned a transformation in men who “proved themselves cowardly and spent their lives in wrong doing were transformed at their second incarnation into women.” Society attributed characteristics of weakness and cowardice feminine, so males who failed to achieve their masculine gender roles must be women. Timaeus is criticizing not only males that have more emotional tendencies, but at the same time condemning females because the norm for them was to be emotional creatures.…