Dialectical Journal For The Odyssey

1. Homer’s hearty descriptions fill the tale with so much beauty and imagination. His tale becomes real before your eyes, and grows with every place that is visited. Every land is a new adventure drawing the reader in. His words flow with glorious succession in detail that paints a picture in the imagination of the most uninventive minds.

2. Homer describes Kirke’s island as a “dire beauty and divine” with a “land of thicket, oaks and wide watercourses.” It contains “wild wood” and frightfully powerful creatures crawled the land. But these creatures which should be feared by all, “fawned on our men” with humility and their “mighty paws.” What was to be feared was Kirke’s deceitful drink.

3. Odysseus displayed courage, bravery, leadership, and love by leaving to go save his men in the beginning. He showed patience and kindness for not blaming them for their actions, as well as grace for them. He showed humility in taking orders, but (in my opinion) stupidity in what he was willing to do once in the cave. His actions, I believe, could have been stronger, and his saving could have gone faster.

4.

While Christians’ view on death is pretty cut and dry, Homer’s is less certain, leaving much to concern for those who have died. A Christian believes that if one has put their faith in Jesus Christ, and given their heart to God they will go to heaven, if not they will go to hell. Those in Homer’s tale don’t have this security in where they will spend eternity. They have a pretty good idea of where they may go, and it isn’t a pretty place. There is no certainty in death, the gods may decide that you may go to a land of wonder in your afterlife or they may decide that you are to be like everyone else. Also there are spirits, and those spirits may be able to come talk to those who still live, even “live” among them. These are things that don’t really happen in the Christian view of “afterlife.” You have eternity in heaven or