Well, I liked it...

[PocoLoco]

One needs a good aide while reading the odyssey. There is alot of things in there that sometimes you can't catch on your own. I, myself, had a political science major go through the text with me. He pointed out things such as the Skylla/Charbdis problem. How would you have handled it? Did he do the moral thing when it came to NOT telling his crew what they were going to have to go through? Did he pick the right thing to do? Should he have tried to get ALL of his men through Charbdis and risked saving everyone, or automaticallly doom certain men to die? Was it his call?

This is just one of the many things that he had to deal with, plus my reading of the text that might suggest that it wasn't even Odysseus to start with made the story the more enjoyable. It's a political work of lit., not one that's going to teach you lessons to apply to your life. You may find a couple, but that's not what I think Homer is aiming at. It's a seperating or withdrawel of the gods from human society and how the human political systems work.

That's my take on it.

[infangec]

alright poco i read your other post i think u misunderstood what your friend was telling you about the odyssey. the entire story is not a withdrawal from the gods... this is not possible as the gods interfere throughout the entire book... the story is about the following or violating the unwritten ancient greek policy of Xenia coming from the ancient greek word ξενία. this pertains to the guest-host relationship in the ancient world. anytime there was any punishments or decisions made on the part of the gods, it was based on the following or violation of Xenia. i could write for years the possibly thousands of examples supporting this point, but in the end of the epic, the peace laid out by Athena was to prevent Odysseus' house from falling subject to the revenge of the families of the suitors due to the fact that the suitors deserved their fates through their violation of Xenia. You may be making the point that Athena's setting up of peace for years to come was to make for the god's withdrawal from society, but on the contrary, Homer would never EVER write a piece ending with the withdrawal of the gods from society. why? because Homer blatantly expresses a seemingly nostalgic respect for the bard throughout this epic and saying that at that time the only reason that bards were able to travel throughout the ancient world sharing tales from around the world was that they were protected by the gods through Xenia, if one were to take the gods out of the picture, this would leave the bard defenseless and would give way to the dying out of their most precious art form

[dbowen73]

I agree with infangec because at that time in the anceint world all the people respected and we protected by was the gods so wouldn't make sense that the story show the gods in a good light rather than them fading from the picture ???