Dead Suitors

       My opinion of the suitors has changed a lot over the course of The Odyssey. They're clearly the bad guys from the start, but I remember them not seeming horribly obnoxious during the Telemachiad. While the suitors were lazy and greedy and excessive in their feasting, they didn't seem so bad to me at first because of the ambivalence we feel towards Penelope at the beginning of the story. I remember the class mentioning several times how Telemachus was getting annoyed with Penelope for leading the suitors on and not making a clear decision about taking a husband or remaining a widow. He seems to blame her for toying with them and elongating the whole process. Because of the distrust surrounding Penelope, the suitors seemed more within their right to be courting her and waiting for her decision (she does say she'll marry one of them during the whole weaving incident). However, the suitors start to go downhill the farther into the story we get. First a group of them plots the murder of Telemachus, which cuts short any pity the reader might have ever felt for them, and although they do not succeed in this endeavor, it shows what they're willing to do to become rich and doesn't make them look good at all.

      It's not until Odysseus returns to Ithaca that I really felt my opinion of the suitors plummet. Instead of welcoming a beggar with hospitality, as we have seen in many other kingdoms throughout this book, the suitors kick Odysseus, throw stools at him, call him names, and threaten him. They are really awful, especially Antinous who is vicious to the beggar-king. While I wasn't really itching for an all out slaughter like Athena and Odysseus were, I definitely did not like the suitors at all by their final chapter. They failed the test of hospitality which is such an obvious custom of this time, and they have been squandering a house that doesn't belong to them for years, behaving as though the servants are theirs. That being said, I felt the slaughter to be a little over the top as a means of revenge. While I understand the sort of necessity in ending with Odysseus crushing 100+ guys for an aesthetic appeal to the ending of such a long quest, I still don't particularly like the way that things play out. It just seems a little cruel to brutally murder all these men, even though the suitors were pretty bad people. I can't help thinking Odysseus, with all his cunning, could have thought of a different course of action to spare all the blood, but we know he and Athena were really wanting the blood, and he did deserve to feel angry at these guys. It still just felt a little too much for me to see Odysseus as an appealing hero. The worst part of it for me was the end when he brought out the maids and made them clean up the bodies and then hung the women. It was emphasized as a painful death and seems so violent, especially since their only crime was disrespecting someone they hadn't met and sleeping with single men who'd been living there for years. And there's Melanthius, who was certainly a despicable person, but his death is the most gruesome of all of them and he is not only killed, but mutilated and tortured. Reading these parts just didn't make me have much respect for Odysseus, because while one could argue the suitors deserved to die, I don't think anyone deserves to be slowly cut into pieces, no matter how badly they offended Odysseus.

       So I don't really know how I feel about the slaughter of the suitors, but I definitely agree they deserved some sort of punishment as they showed their nastiness and unwelcoming attitudes at the end of the story. I still wish Odysseus/Athena had thought of something better, or had at least been somewhat kind and granted the some of the people quicker deaths.

Odysseus...meh

       Maybe it's because of the group presentations this week, which all hilariously summarized Odysseus' wanderings quite sarcastically, but I'm a little disappointed with Odysseus as a hero so far. It's clear that to the people of Greece during this time period he is an epic hero because he has survived so much hurt and he is favored by the gods. I know it's not really fair to judge him by today's standards, but I can't really help it, he just kind of annoys me. While he is humble enough to reject other peoples comparison of him to the gods, he's still somewhat fond of his own strength, especially in requesting songs be sung about himself when he's with the Phaeacians. Odysseus receives tons of help from Athena, and while that's apparently super cool back then, it doesn't make him very heroic in my eyes especially as he doesn't do much to thank her for being the only reason he's still alive. In general, anytime the Greeks want to thank the gods all they do is kill a bunch of animals, which doesn't seem to be a very sincere or personal display of gratitude (I know, I know, historical context). To me Athena is the most heroic character in the book at the moment, and that's not really fair because she's a goddess.

       One of my least favorite things about Odysseus right now is his concern for Penelope being faithful to him while he's off sleeping with Circe for a whole year. I mean obviously this is a sexual double standard of the time period, but I think Calypso points it out pretty clearly when she argues how men are allowed to have all these affairs and women aren't. It's just irritating when Odysseus claims he's being faithful to Penelope just because he misses her... kind of a loose definition of faithful.

       The main heroic trait Odysseus seems to have is his insane physical strength. It's definitely pretty awesome that he can swim for days and fight off giant monsters, but he's also getting power boosts from Athena and it doesn't really give him a satisfying heroic character. Odysseus is supposed to be known for his "twists and turns," his wisdom and cunning tricks, and a big part where he displays this is in his defeat of Polyphemus. However after our class discussion I'm not even finding that very heroic. Odysseus did what he had to do to get out, but he also bragged about it and could have avoided the whole situation by not taking advantage of the cyclops. While I can understand why he seems very noble and god-like to the other people in the book, to me he is just not very likable. 

       The only thing that changes my mind a little about Odysseus's character is reading the passages where he is distraught and pleading to go home, because then I do feel sorry for him and can see his pain and feel how terrible it would be to be lost for 10 years with no family and all your friends being constantly killed or eaten. Reading the actual text does make me pity him more and perhaps I would like him better if I had read all of the books in the "Wanderings" section. As of now I admire his strength and his cunning, but in general I do not like him and I wish he would actually say something sincere instead of just pretending to be faithful.