In Socratic class we have studied many literature heroes, such as Achilles, Ajax, Odysseus, and Beowulf. But have you noticed the creepy similarities between all of them?
I will start with Achilles. He is a legendary warrior, big muscles, and half-god. He kills Hector, Troy's mightiest warrior, and many other of Troy's princes. He is really cocky and self-inflated. HE refuses to fight because his leader, Agamemnon, was rude to him and took his woman. Even when he is offered a mound of treasure, he says his honor is too important to go back. He only returns when forced by the gods. Yet even though he is a big jerk, everyone likes him. He survives many wounds through miraculous healing. Yet he dies because he gets shot in the heel by an arrow.
Next is Ajax. He is a giant of a man, kills many warriors, and is big and cocky and thinks he is invincible. There was a contest is between him and Odysseus about who was their best warrior. Odysseus won, and Ajax's honor was so hurt that committed suicide. And yet, everyone looked up to him.
Now is Beowulf. I haven't finished the whole book, but I am almost done. From what I've read,
he has managed to kill three legendary monsters that no one else could kill. Grendel, his mom, and the dragon. Grendel was killing people for twelve years, then all of the sudden Beowulf comes along and is so strong he rips his arm off, and received no damage himself. Then he somehow breathes underwater form a couple hours and kills Grendel's mother. She would have killed him, but his armor managed to save him and somehow found a giant sword that killed her. He was always boasting about how strong and amazing he was. When he fought the dragon, he was so cocky he told everyone to stay back, and he would kill it himself. But he ended up dying, and it was only because of his loyal servant that he managed to kill the dragon. ANd everyone looks up to him as a great hero.
Are you seeing the pattern here? They are all extremely lucky, strong, boastful, have issues with honor, and accomplish amazing deeds through some sort of luck or divine intervention. I think they all are pretty awesome, but they are all big cocky jerks as well. I think it might even be possible that all of the different stories could have descended from one original story that we don't know about. The Odyssey and Beowulf are pretty similar if you think about it...
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2 comments:
That is so true and I have even written a little prologue talking about how pridictable a lot of stories are because thay always have heroes like that. It's kinda annoying to read books that have heroes like that because you can predict what the book is going to do...sigh...there aren't any good books anymore.
Yeah that's true, man has had a tendency to repeat themes of stories all throughout history. History repeats itself constantly! Although what you said about them all being cocky jerks isn't so true about Beowulf. I liked Beowulf the most out of all of them. It's also really annoying how they always do superhuman acts and just say it was divine intervention. It's all so predictable as Mackenzie said.They're still classic stories though. It's not as if all of them got together and copied each other. Each culture needs its own stories to learn from and for entertainment. They also have different literature style for their different cultures which can be interesting.
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