So it's getting on to the end of the year, and life is pretty miserable. They want the year to be over; I want the year to be over. So today I tried to figure out what I would do for the last few weeks of school. It occurred to me to do a unit on film, and that got me thinking, "what suitably excellent piece of cinema could I show high school students and expect them to enjoy?" I got a little side-tracked and ended up compiling a list of The Greatest Films Ever Made. Now all I need is a Netflix account.
What does Telemachus learn from Nestor and Meneleus?
It seemed to me/us that though both had arrived home and were with their families, neither were so enviable as Odysseus would be on his day of homecoming.
Nestor attributes just about everything to the gods, surrendering much of the control in his life. He is the opposite of “resourceful” Odysseus who makes his own way. Of the two great counselors at Troy, Nestor proves to be famous only for making it home quickly, while Odysseus wins wide fame for the scheme that sacked Troy. Nestor seems a little bitter and spends an awful lot of time talking about how right he was to leave early.
Meneleus represents the other end of the spectrum in terms of “resourcelessness.” He presents a picture of impotence, being unable to keep his wife at home, wage his own war, save his brother, or even discern how to please the gods and arrive home. Katrina pointed out that he is a man of big words, saying that he would displace a city to have Odysseus near him, and he would trade all his wealth to save those who died at Troy, but he is unable to deliver. Nestor is humble even to the exclusion of glory (kleios). Perhaps Odysseus will represent something like a golden mean, though seemingly a different one from Aristotle’s great-souled man. His a man of many resources who more than the others seems to drive his own fate.
It seems that while on the trip, Telemachus should have seen that simply arriving home is not all it’s cracked up to be, that Odysseus is a greater counselor than Nestor and has a better wife than Meneleus has, but what did he learn about becoming a man, a king like his father? What evidence is there that he learned? There is the lie he tells Meneleus about needing to hurry back to his companions in Pylos, but what other evidence is there that Telemachus understands his father better and is becoming like him?
Why does he keep asking about Orestes?
My friend, Katrina, and I are reading the Odyssey, by Homer. We are suitably
baffled by parts and you are cordially invited to both join us in our inquiry,
and resolve our confusion.
Book I
Questions we pursued:
· Why, out of all the misadventures Odysseus endures does Homer mention the slaughter of Apollo's cattle in the first paragraph? What is recklessness?
· Why is Zeus thinking about "blameless" Aigisthos (we're not totally clear on how Orestes failing to accept Aigisthos shows the need to tame a son's ambitions)?
· Why is Telemachus so hard on Penelope when she asks Phemios not to sing the song about Troy (do his words have a different meaning for the suitors than they do for Penelope, who lays his serious words deep away in her spirit?)?
Questions that remain:
· Why does an epic about homecoming have to have a polytropos hero?
· Does the companions' recklessness with the cattle have anything to do with the recklessness Zeus speaks of in line 34? Is Aigisthos reckless?
· How much of her plan does Athena articulate in the council?
· Why does Telemachus invite the suitors to eat and hear Phemios, then tell them that tomorrow at the assembly he will kick them out, then lie to them about Odysseus being alive? It seems a strange sequence of hospitality, boldness/truth, and lies.