Essay Research for The Odyssey.
Ethical Concerns:
● Infidelity is frowned upon today but in the 3rd Century, it wasn’t unusual. See Helen +
Menelaos, Odysseus + Penelope.
● Mass slaughter.
● Theft.
● The massacre of enemies.
● Slave dealing.
Spiritual Concerns.
● The Odyssey is a parable for the journey of the human soul to the Edenic state of
happiness.
● The four fundamental doctrines identified by Aldous Huxley.
● Look for ideas created by Plato.
● Odysseus could represent the ‘conscience.’
Helpful quotes:
The Cambridge Companion to Homer: The Odyssey and its Explorations.
Michael Silk, pages 31-44.
● While discussing the differences between The Illiad and The Odyssey, Michael Silk
decides, ‘though its formulaic idiom, its ritualism, and its heroic ideal are similar, the
Odyssean universe, by comparison, seems restless and less assured of any ultimate
correspondence than concerned to achieve one.’ Page 31.
● On the topic of Penelope’s suitors, Silk encourages the idea that ‘few of Homer’s modern
readers would condone revenge killing in such a context. [...] The modern reader,
certainly, is left to ponder the grossness of the overstatement in Odysseus’ triumphant
words, a hundred verses later: ‘no living soul did they honour.’’ Page 37.
Ethical Concerns:
● Infidelity is frowned upon today but in the 3rd Century, it wasn’t unusual. See Helen +
Menelaos, Odysseus + Penelope.
● Mass slaughter.
● Theft.
● The massacre of enemies.
● Slave dealing.
Spiritual Concerns.
● The Odyssey is a parable for the journey of the human soul to the Edenic state of
happiness.
● The four fundamental doctrines identified by Aldous Huxley.
● Look for ideas created by Plato.
● Odysseus could represent the ‘conscience.’
Helpful quotes:
The Cambridge Companion to Homer: The Odyssey and its Explorations.
Michael Silk, pages 31-44.
● While discussing the differences between The Illiad and The Odyssey, Michael Silk
decides, ‘though its formulaic idiom, its ritualism, and its heroic ideal are similar, the
Odyssean universe, by comparison, seems restless and less assured of any ultimate
correspondence than concerned to achieve one.’ Page 31.
● On the topic of Penelope’s suitors, Silk encourages the idea that ‘few of Homer’s modern
readers would condone revenge killing in such a context. [...] The modern reader,
certainly, is left to ponder the grossness of the overstatement in Odysseus’ triumphant
words, a hundred verses later: ‘no living soul did they honour.’’ Page 37.
