Thursday, December 15, 2011

Slaughter in the Hall

Although despite Odysseus revealing himself, at the dawn of book twenty-two, the suitors are suddenly very calm and collected. Then they are dead. Well, some of them--the others ask Odysseus for mercy, and they offer tribute and sacrifices. He kills them anyway--I don't know exactly how righteous anger works, but I don't know if I agree with this situation. I can't entirely figure it out. They were jerks. Now he's killing them. They don't exactly apologize, but they want to keep living... so they try to appease him. WHAT is the right thing to do here?

Then Athena tells Odysseus to man up (234-243).

"The attackers struck like eagles" (316). The fulfillment of the eagling. FINALLY.

Leodes, the nice one, dies anyway (324-341). He's not a boor, so I didn't quite understand it--until I remembered that he's a suitor, courting Penelope. Who is Odysseus' wife. Sooo he's not the happiest guy right now. It's too bad, though, that Nice Leodes dies. (I remember Knox mentioning it in the introduction.) But the steward and the bard live--they're only servants, forced into doing the suitors' bidding (345-401). I guess that makes sense, but it's sort of obnoxious, because Leodes was nice.

Then Odysseus says he needs his nurse (416-417), which is funny. Once all the suitors are dead, Odysseus rounds up the wenches, makes them clean up his bloody mess, and hangs them in the yard. It's brutal. I suppose it's Greek. Then he destroys Melanthius, and that is savage (471-504). "Manic fury" =/= righteous anger. Just because you're going to kill someone doesn't mean you have to merciless rip them apart.

1 comment:

  1. The wenches more or less... enabled the suitors. And comforted them on hard nights. Also, they weren't loyal to Odysseus like the others. So at least in Odysseus' head, it's okay to slay them too.

    Righteous anger or Manic Fury: Was what he did okay? Was it justified? Why or why not?

    I bet he thought it was okay, because his idea of what was right or wrong wasn't based on the idea of death being a bad thing. Or on the individual rights of the suitors. Their idea of right and wrong was a LOT different than ours, if you haven't noticed.

    On the other hand, they attacked him.

    Also, I'm pretty sure anything you read in there about the slayings is pretty much the same thing you'll see going on in movies like Underworld or Snakes on a Plane or Star Wars or Need for Speed. That's the same kind of violence, but we don't think badly of it there. Why not? Maybe we should.

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