Friday, May 8, 2009

The Odyssey Part 1

There's so much going on in this poem that I'm going to discuss key moments that come to mind. Telemakhos could've been less of a wuss. I know that he's supposedly insecure because he never had a father figure and so he's tormented by these suitors. But he could've gone the other way and in his hatred and resentment of these men worked hard to assert himself. So obviously Homer wanted the sort of coming of age story to exist within the poem. There's a question as to why though. If Odysseus is going to return than it isn't necessary for Telemakhos to find himself before he returns. I know that the situation in Ithaca is supposedly dire, but it isn't such an emergency that anything serious happens before Odysseus returns. It's true that Telemakhos's life is discussed as being in danger but I just wonder about Homer's motivations. The poem is so complicated, I wonder if it would take away from it to simplify it, since a great deal of the information is only apparent upon inspection and at the time it was spoken that was almost impossible. The moments with the birds as symbols is almost irrelevant at this point in time. Maybe in Homer's time it really meant something to his audience to have those moments but they're basically footnotes to us. The meanings behind those animals are lost because of the Judo-Christian traditions that are so common to us now. Telemakhos was really most of the focus for the opening the suspense of that is always sort of fun.

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