A student wants to know what to make of Homer’s apparent approval of Odysseus’s lying. The question doesn’t admit of an easy answer.
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Tag Archives: Homer
When We Yield to Inner Darkness
The Odyssey explores how violence can swallow up those who engage in it. Odysseus is heroic in that he can listen to religious checks when blood lust threatens.
Overcoming the Siren Call of Domination
A reader suggests that the island enchantresses in “Odyssey” help the hero in his quest for integration.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Carl Jung, emasculation fears, individuation, Joseph Campbell, Odyssey, Sigmund Freud Comments closed
The Dangers of Emotional Identification
In which I push back against an article warning about emotional identification with literary characters.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Age of Sensibility, Anne Radcliffe, Goethe, Hannah Arendt, Iliad, Jane Austen, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Namwali Serpell, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Sorrows of Young Werther Comments closed
The Hero and the Goddess
My reflections on the meaning of Homer’s gods “The Odyssey.”
Odysseus’s Emasculation Anxieties
“The Odyssey” is obsessed with a fear of emasculation.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged emasculation anxieties, Feminism, monsters, Odyssey Comments closed
What Do Odysseus’s Monsters Mean?
My explanation for the monsters in “The Odyssey.”
The World Will End in Fire AND Ice
When Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” it now appears (judging by Australia and Greenland) that everyone is right.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Fire and Ice", Australian wildfires, C. S. Lewis, climate change, Iliad, Last Battle, Robert Frost Comments closed
Mentor: Rare for Sons to Be Like Fathers
Homer explores the difficulty of a young man living up to his famous father. It’s a problem that continues with fathers and sons.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, fathers and sons, Odyssey, Ulysses Comments closed