week9

1. What role does fate play in the emotional and psychological effect of the Iliad? Why does Homer make his characters aware of their impending dooms?

  Homer’s original audience would already have been intimately familiar with the story The Iliad tells. Making his characters cognizant of their fates merely puts them on par with the epic’s audience. In deciding to make his characters knowledgeable about their own futures, he loses the effect of dramatic irony, in which the audience watches characters stumble toward ends that it alone knows in advance. But Homer doesn’t sacrifice drama; in fact, this technique renders the characters more compelling. They do not fall to ruin out of ignorance, but instead become tragic figures who go knowingly to their doom because they have no real choice. In the case of Hector and Achilles, their willing submission to a fate they recognize but cannot evade renders them not only tragic but emphatically heroic.

2.How does Homer portray the relationship between gods and men in the Odyssey? What roles do the gods play in human life? How does this portrayal differ from that found in the Iliad?

In the Iliad, the gods relate to human beings either as external powers that influence the lives of mortals from without, as when Apollo unleashes plague upon the Achaeans, or from within, as when Aphrodite incites Helen to make love to Paris or when Athena gives Diomedes courage in battle. In the Odyssey, the gods are often much less grand. They function more as spiritual guides and supporters for their human subjects, sometimes assuming mortal disguises in order to do so. The actions of the gods sometimes remain otherworldly, as when Poseidon decides to wreck the ship of the Phaeacians, but generally they grant direct aid to particular individuals. In a sense, the change in the behavior of the gods is wholly appropriate to the shift in focus between the two epics. The Iliad depicts a violent and glorious war, and the gods act as frighteningly powerful, supernatural forces. The Odyssey, in contrast, chronicles a long journey, and the gods frequently act to guide and advise the wandering hero.