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Medieval Epic Journey.
The Odyssey synopsis.
The story tells of a Greek hero Odysseus who has gone missing for ten years and has not returned to his native home Ithaca in Greece. The story is set ten years after the fall of the city of Troy and narrates how Odysseus’ palace is overrun by suitors who are courting his ever-faithful wife, Penelope. The goddess Athena seeks permission from Zeus to intervene. Athena disguises herself and urges Odysseus’s son Telemachus to find his father’s whereabouts at Plylos and Sparta. However, the suitors, being led by Antonius, make plans to ambush him upon his return.
Telemachus trails his father through stories from his former comrade soldiers. Meanwhile, Athena arranges Odysseus’s release from the goddess Calypso’s island, where he has been her prisoner and lover for the last eight years. Odysseus sets sail on a raft where he encounters Poseidon, the sea god and whose wrath Odysseus had experienced earlier in his adventures. However, he is helped by Cyclops Polyphemus, who conjures a storm blinding Poseidon’s son therefore escaping and reaching Phaecians. There he meets princess Nausicaa who has a crush on the handsome warrior, and she opens her palace to the stranger. Odysseus tries to keep his identity private until finally, at Phaecians’ request, he narrates the story of his adventures.
Odysseus narrates how his men suffered a great deal at the hands of Kikones after the Trojan War. More so, they were faced with the temptation of staying on an island of a drug-addled Lotus Eater. After that, Cyclops Polyphemus devoured many of Odysseus’s men before coming up with a great plan that allowed the rest to escape but not before Odysseus revealed his name to Cyclops and thus started his war with Poseidon. Alios, the wind god, provided him with a bag of winds that would help him return home. Trouble came when his crew greedily opened the bag sending the ship to the land of a man-eating giant Laistrygonians, where they narrowly escaped.
On their next stop, they encountered goddess Circe who tricked Odysseus’s men, turning them into pigs. God Hermes helps them to reverse the spell turning the pigs back to men. They, therefore, spent the next year on the island with Odysseus as her lover. They move on, fighting the temptations of the dangerous and seductive Sirens, escaping the sea monster Scylla, plumbing the depths of Hades to receive a prophecy from a blind seer Tiresias. While resting on Helios’s island, Odysseus’ men disobey his orders not to touch the oxen. Later at sea they encounter Zeus wrath and all but Odysseus die in a storm. It was then that Odysseus arrived at calypsos’ island. He finishes his story, and the Phaecians provides him with gifts and ferries him home on a ship.
Through the help of Athena, Odysseus disguises himself as a beggar to investigate his palace. Meanwhile, Athena helps Telemachus avoid the suitors’ ambush and is reunited with his father. They devise a plan to overthrow the suitors, and he gains the loyalty of Penelope and some of his servants. Penelope notices that the beggar looks like her husband. She, therefore, comes up with a plan for a contest where she will marry the winner. The suitor who can string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow through a couple of ax heads wins. Odysseus is the single person who can pull that off. Therefore, he takes the suitors’ massacres, starting with Antonia, and is aided by Athena revealing his identity. Later, after being reunited with his wife, he visits his ailing father but encounters hostility from an army of suitors, relatives, and battle brakes. Before the battle could go any further, Athena, on command from Zeus, orders peace between the two sides.
Hesiod, Theogony synopsis.
Theogony describes the creation of the universe, including everything in it. It begins with chaos, and this chaos marks the genesis of the first beings. These beings were Gaia (mother earth), Eros (desire), Tartarus (the underworld), Erebus (darkness), and Nyx (night). Gaia created the heavens and the sky. Gaia and Uranus bring to existence the twelve titans, three Cyclopes, and three hundred-headed monsters known as Hecatoncheries. However, they were later banished to Tartarus by Uranus because he hated them.
Gaia becomes devastated by Uranus’ action and asks one of the titan’s Kronos to dethrone Uranus. Kronos successfully dethrones Uranus through a sickle gift made by Gaia, which Kronos used to castrate Uranus. From Uranus’ blood, Furues, Meliai, and Giants are born. Kronos threw Uranus’ genitals into the sea from which the goddess of love Aphrodite came into existence. Kronos and his wife become king and queen of the gods. They had six children, namely Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. It was prophesied that one of Krono’s children would dethrone him. Therefore, Kronos started to eat his children to prevent this from happening. His wife Rhea, who was upset by her husband’s actions, prevented him from eating their youngest son Zeus by hiding him on Mount Ida and giving Kronos a stone disguised as a baby.
Zeus grew and matured; he became strong enough and embarked on a quest to avenge his siblings and defeat his father, Kronos. He gave his father a poisoned drink forcing him to throw up his brothers. With the help of his siblings and other titans, Zeus defeated his father in a ten-year-long battle: he and Hera rose to the throne as the new and final rulers of the gods.
Modern Epic Journey.
Star Wars synopsis.
Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a faraway galaxy. The movie revolves around a civil war taking place. The rebellion seeks to defeat Darth Vader and his imperial forces from the Galactic Empire, an oppressive force whose aim is to destroy civilization across the universe. Princess Lea heads the rebellion, and she manages to steal the blueprints and details of a death star from the Imperial. However, she is captured, but she puts the details in a memory droid known as R2-D2, who escapes with another droid, C3-PO, to the planet of Tatooine.
Scavengers found the droids and sold them to two farmers, Owen and Beru Lars, whose nephew, Luke Skywalker, was in charge of cleaning them. While cleaning the droids, he accidentally opens Lea’s message, which is addresses to Obi-Wan- Kenobi. Luke and the droid R2-D2 find a man named Ben Kenobi, who later reveals himself as Obi-Wan. He was a former Jedi Knight whose task was to maintain peace across the galaxies form using special power from the force; he explained how the Empire destroyed the Jedi and forced him into hiding. He also reveals that Darth Vader killed Luke’s father and gives the boy a lightsaber, a very powerful sword-like weapon.
The message sent requests that Obi-Wan travels to Alderaan to give the message to Lea’s father. Luke decides to accompany him. They employ Han Solo as their pilot to Alderaan, a sardonic smuggler, and his sidekick Chewbacca. Sadly when they get there, they learn that the place has completely been destroyed by Grand Moff and Darth Vader using the Death Star. Obi-Wan can disable the tractor beam; however, he’s killed in a stand-off with Darth Vader. Luke and Han Solo travel to the rebel base were plans to destroy the death star are underway using Lea’s blueprints. Luke is at the forefront of the mission and s aided by Han Solo and the spirit of Obi-Wan, which reminds him that the force is with him. Luke successfully blows up the imperial Space station.
Elements of Epic Genre
- The plot centers on a Hero of unbelievable Stature.
The given stories employ all the elements of the epic genre. In the Odyssey, the warrior and hero Odysseus completes what the suitors are unable to achieve. He strings the bow and shoots an arrow through a couple of ax heads to win back his wife from rowdy suitors. He is the only one who accomplishes the task given. In the Hesiod Theogony, we find the god Zeus who fulfills a prophecy about dethroning his father and saving his siblings who had been eaten by his father by giving him a poisoned drink that forces him to throw up. The Star Wars Saga also tells the story of a farm boy Luke Skywalker who is on a quest to destroy the death star formed by the Empire, which is aimed at destroying the galaxy civilization. He joins the rebellion, and with the help of the spirit of Obi-Wan and the force, he manages to destroy the imperial space station.
- Deeds of superhuman strength and valor.
Throughout the stories, the named heroes did not accomplish the tasks solely on their own but found supernatural assistance. Odysseus finds help from the gods. When he was at sea, he found help with Alios, the wind god who gives him winds to take him home, but that does not end well. Regardless, Odysseus is constantly helped by goddess Athena who facilitates his release and wins his wife Penelope back. In the Theogony, Zeus is helped by the Cyclopes and the titans in a battle against his father, Kronos. Luke Skywalker is helped by the spirit of Obi-Wan, who keeps him strong by reminding him that a supernatural power known as the force is with him. Through this encouragement, Luke can accomplish the mission.
- Vast setting.
The Odyssey takes place throughout many places and in faraway lands ruled by different gods. Odyssey travels across the sea and finds himself in great danger until he one day returns home. Theogony is centered on the vast universe that is, Earth, the underworld where Uranus banishes the hundred-headed monsters, and the sea where Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was born. Star wars also take us across galaxies and different planets. Luke and Obi-Wan travel to Alderaan plane, which they find have been destroyed. Luke later travels to the rebel base, where he plans to accomplish the task at hand.
- Supernatural and otherworldly forces.
Odysseus encounters many supernatural beings, such as Cyclops, who devours some of his men. He also meets the goddess Circe who turns his men into pigs; however, he finds help with the god Hermes who helps them reverse the spell. They also encounter the god Zeus who kills all the men in a storm, and only Odysseus survives. The theogony narrates how the universe came to be out of nothingness. It tells of how a virgin Gaia gives birth to Uranus. The star wars explore space travel across the galaxy to find justice and stop the ever tyrannical Empire.
- Sustained elevation of style.
The given stories have an elevated style of narration. In the Odyssey, exaggeration is used to describe the difficulty of Odysseus’s journey through the ten years he had been missing or rather presumed dead. Exaggeration is also found in the theogony where Gaia and Uranus gave birth to a hundred-headed monster posing how many heads are too many? The star wars tell of a conscious droid that can escape human radar and submit a message.
- Poet remains objective and omniscient.
Across all the stories, the narrators know and give a clear perspective. We see the story from Odysseus’s side while everyone else took the easier road of assuming he was dead after missing but instead, he was fighting a great deal of survival to get back home to his family. The narrator also cuts across all the characters involved in the story and accounts for each character. Zeus plans an attack on his father, Kronos. The narrators also go-ahead to bring in Kronos’ side of the story and why he ate Zeus’ siblings. The narrator also brings Rheas’s perspective and how devastated she was about her husband eating their children. The Star Wars Saga narrates of different key players beginning with princess Lea who, without her help, the rebellion would not have succeeded in destroying the death star. More so, if Luke had not met Obi-Wan, he would have never known that it was Darth Vader that killed his father. This is what sparks Luke’s interest in being involved in the rebellion’s quest.
Comparison of the given heroes.
Odysseus has the nature of a warrior. His story of a warrior begins in the Trojan War, where they win but unluckily get lost on their way home. Gods often help the Greek culture value heroes and accomplish certain tasks, often about saving the community from destruction or its enemies. His heroism revolves around fighting battles or finding wise ways of escaping danger. A hero is often known by how many dangers they have survived and emerged as a victor. Odysseus encounters human-eating monsters, but he eventually comes up with a survival plan; he also encounters god Zeus’ wrath and emerges the only survivor. Throughout the story, it is evident that the culture’s definition of a hero is the one who encounters great battles and can do extraordinary things.
The theogony explores a hero as a master of deceit. We first see how the goddess Gaia plans on deceiving Uranus, her husband, through Kronos, a titan through a sickle gift. The plan succeeds, and Uranus is overthrown, making Kronos the king. Rhea uses deception to trick her husband into thinking that the stone he presented him with is their younger son, Zeus, therefore, saving him from being devoured. Zeus also tricks Kronos into drinking a poisoned drink, which in turn makes him throw up Zeus’ siblings, who later helps him in his quest to dethrone Kronos.
Modern Society’s view of a hero is not much different from that of the medieval world. However, the only difference is that there is no direct involvement of the gods and a hero’s journey depends on believing in themselves and putting their trust in people. That is, working as a team to defeat the evil force. In star wars, Luke had to believe in himself and trust the rebellion to crash the imperial death star. In both the modern and the medieval presentation of a hero, we see that the hero saves the world from tyrannical rulers. In both, the main quest is to bring peace to the universe and to seek vengeance and justice for those who have been treated unfairly.
Influence of the epic theme in western European culture.
The Western European culture is a term that is broadly used to describe the heritage of social norms, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, and other specific artifacts that have some origin association with Europe. The term applies to states whose history is marked by European immigration: America and Australia. The term is not necessarily restricted to Europe.
The medieval contributed greatly to western thought and renaissance as we advance, rationalism in different aspects of life, the scientific revolution, and enlightenment. The historical record of European culture begins with Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece. It has continued to develop, reform, modern, and globalization by successive European empires spreading their influence worldwide—the western culture developed with a compound range of philosophy, mysticism, Christian and secular humanism.
European culture spread and grew through globalization, intending to adopt, adapt, and mainly influence other cultural trends worldwide. They have come to be known as the new age movements where human migration has also played a major character.