This is from my textbook. It will not allow us to share. I will copy certain themes. The assignment is an Adaptation Comparison and Review. The first two pages are of my text. I am looking to compare the movie O Where Art Thou? with the Odyssey since each is an epic itself.
I am having a lot trouble trying to comapre and contrast both the Odyssey and the movie O’ Where Art Thou? I understand they are in different eras, but the charaters and plot in
O Where Art Thou? has me thrown off. I copied the cast of characters of the movie if
needed.
Homer:
Oral poets in ancient Greece used a traditional form (a six-beat line called hexameter), fitting their own riffs into the rhythm, with musical accompaniment. They also relied on common themes, traditional stories, traditional characters, traditional descriptors (such as “swift Achilles” or “black ships”), phrases that fit the rhythm of the line, and even whole scenes that follow a set pattern, such as the way a warrior gets dressed or the way that meals are prepared. Fluent poetic ad-libbing is very difficult; these techniques gave each performer a structure, so that stories and lines did not have to be generated entirely on the spot. We know that the tradition of this type of composition must have gone back hundreds of years, because the Iliad and the Odyssey include details that would have been anachronistic by the time these poems were written down, such as the use of bronze weapons: by the eighth century, soldiers fought with iron.
The precise anatomical detail reminds us how vulnerable these warriors are, because they have mortal bodies—in contrast to the gods, who may participate in battle but can never die.
The plot deals with the exchange or ransoming of human bodies. Achilles’ anger at Agamemnon is roused by a quarrel about who owns Briseïs, a young woman Achilles has seized as a prize of war but whom Agamemnon takes as recompense for the loss of his own captive woman, Chryseïs. The story also hinges on the ownership of dead male bodies: the corpses, in turn, of Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector. War seems to produce its own kind of economy, a system of exchange: a live woman for a dead warrior, one life for another, or death for undying fame.
Fascinatingly, the Iliad makes the Trojans as fully human as the Greeks. The Trojan hero, Hector, seems to many readers the most likeable character in the poem, fighting not for vengeance but to protect his wife and their infant son. The Iliad culminates in an astonishing encounter, between Priam, king of Troy, and Achilles, who has killed his son Hector. The experience of grief is common to all humans, even those who kill each other in war. The major contrast drawn by the Iliad is not between Greek and Trojan, but between the humans and the immortal gods.
The most important fact about all the warriors in the Iliad is that they die. Moreover, before death humans have to face grief, dishonor, loss, and pain—experiences that play little or no part in any god’s life. Achilles in his wrath refuses to accept the horror of loss: loss of honor, and the loss of his dearest friend, Patroclus. His anger can end, and he can eat again, only when his heart becomes “enduring,” and he realizes that all humans, even the greatest warriors, have to endure unendurable loss and keep on living. The Iliad provides a bleak but inspiring account of human suffering as a kind of power that the gods themselves cannot achieve.
The Odyssey is particularly concerned with the laws of hospitality, which in Greek is xenia—a word that covers the whole relationship between guests and hosts, and between strangers and those who take them in. Hospitality is the fundamental criterion for civilized society in this poem.The Odyssey has elements we associate with many other types of literature: romance, folklore, heroism, mystery, travelers’ tales, magic, military exploits, and family drama. As the first word indicates, this is a poem about humanity.
Summary: As Achilles, angry with Agamemnon, stays out of the fighting, the Trojans make a series of successful attacks against the Greek forces. They are led by the greatest of the Trojan heroes, Hector, son of Priam and brother of Paris, who leaves behind his wife and infant son to challenge the invading army and defend his home. When Hector brings the Trojan soldiers right up to the Greek ships, ready to set them on fire, Agamemnon acknowledges that he made a mistake to alienate Achilles, and sends messengers (including Odysseus) to try to persuade the hero to return to the war. But Achilles holds out, and the fighting continues. Many men die on both sides. Finally Achilles’ friend, Patroclus, volunteers to fight in his place, borrowing Achilles’ own armor. He is killed by Hector. Hector strips Achilles’ divine armor from Patroclus’s corpse. A fierce fight for the body itself ends in partial success for the Greeks; they take Patroclus’s body but have to retreat to their camp, with the Trojans at their heels.
The Book of Shields.
Summary:Achilles finally accepts gifts of restitution from Agamemnon, as he refused to do earlier. His return to the fighting brings terror to the Trojans and turns the battle into a rout in which Achilles kills every Trojan that crosses his path. As he pursues Agenor, Apollo tricks him by rescuing his intended victim (he spirits him away in a mist) and assumes Agenor’s shape to lead Achilles away from the walls of Troy. The Trojans take refuge in the city, all except Hector.
The Death of Hector
SummaryAchilles buries Patroclus, and the Greeks celebrate the dead hero’s fame with athletic games, for which Achilles gives the prizes.
Difficult Choices
Summary: The Phaeacians send Odysseus back to Ithaca with gifts. Athena meets him and together they plot to kill the suitors. Athena disguises Odysseus as an old beggar, and he visits Eumaeus, the old slave who takes care of his pigs. Athena goes to Telemachus and instructs him to come back home. While boarding his ship, Telemachus meets Theoclymenus, an exile who is skilled in prophecy; when they reach Ithaca, there is a good omen. Telemachus leaves Theoclymenus to stay with Pireaus.
Iliad: The Wrath of Achille
Summary: As Achilles, angry with Agamemnon, stays out of the fighting, the Trojans make a series of successful attacks against the Greek forces. They are led by the greatest of the Trojan heroes, Hector, son of Priam and brother of Paris, who leaves behind his wife and infant son to challenge the invading army and defend his home. When Hector brings the Trojan soldiers right up to the Greek ships, ready to set them on fire, Agamemnon acknowledges that he made a mistake to alienate Achilles, and sends messengers (including Odysseus) to try to persuade the hero to return to the war. But Achilles holds out, and the fighting continues. Many men die on both sides. Finally Achilles’ friend, Patroclus, volunteers to fight in his place, borrowing Achilles’ own armor. He is killed by Hector. Hector strips Achilles’ divine armor from Patroclus’s corpse. A fierce fight for the body itself ends in partial success for the Greeks; they take Patroclus’s body but have to retreat to their camp, with the Trojans at their heels.
In Popular Culture
The stories of Achilles in popular culture include:
The 2004 movie Troy, based on Homer’s Iliad, stars Brad Pitt as Achilles and Orlando Bloom as Paris.
The comic book character Achilles, in the Marvel pantheon, is a Holocaust survivor with supernatural powers of strength and vulnerability.
The 2011 book The Achilles Effect: What Pop Culture Is Teaching Young Boys about Masculinity, by Crystal Smith, examines the impact of the Achilles figure on today’s American boys and men.
Source:
Essay by Jacob Howland, Odysseus Against the Matriarchy, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2019 Page
Source:
Dimrock, George. “The Name of Odysseus.” The Hudson Review 9 (1956), 52-70.
The Odyssey focuses on a solitary man who must find his way to the new post-war reality.
George Dimock argues in his essay “The Name of Odysseus,” means “to cause pain [to oneself and others] Page 98
Jacob Howard “The Odyssey is a drams of cultural and political suicide that plays out between vicious extremes of masculinity and femininity.
Jacob Howard- The matriarchal social reckoning now afoot in the United States aims to produce a society composed essentially of domesticated children. Page 99
Jacob Howard – Today’s fiery ideologists, male and female alike, have forgotten that human life is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and the struggle of civilization against chaos. P 99
O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey through Popular Culture
O Brother, a Depression-era romp with a smooth-talking, smoothly coifed escaped convict, opts for the folktale Odyssey. Each film then reflects a different side of the epic itself.
Source: Mallory Young
Tarleton State University
Stephenville, Texas, USA
