Throughout the course, something that caught my attention was the way the authors of these poems and epics depict gods in their pieces. It seems as if they portray them as being perfect figures who can do no wrong. There is a double standard in their work because these gods and goddesses could get away with their wrong doings but men are looked down upon for these similar deeds. A perfect example of this would be in the epic The Odyssey. There are multiple situations where the divine figure was not punished or shamed for doing what they did while the mortals were punished severely.
In the text towards the end of the epic, Odysseus who is considered to be a brave and a heroic king finally returns home to his wife and son after struggling to return home from the War of Troy. What awaits him back in Ithaca is a group of suitors who doubts his return, plots to killing his son and to take his wife Penelope’s hand in marriage. When Odysseus reaches home, he kills all the suitors and with that the suitor’s family tries to seek for revenge on Odysseus but Athena, the god of wisdom stops them and forces them to go home. Because Odysseus is part god himself, it seems as if he is highly regarded by the gods like Athena and Zeus and is given the characteristic that he could do no wrong and should receive help from the gods. Why is it that Odysseus could kill a group of people and get away with it but when their family goes to avenge them, they’re told in a sense that they are not allowed to and are forced away?
Does the Author of this epic and other epics we’ve gone through in class put gods or god like figures up on a pedestal where it seems like they could do no wrong?
What I find interesting from your post is when you mentioned that the Gods can get away with deeds that would be scrutinized if a human were to do this. In my opinion, this stems from the fact that at this point in human history people feared the Gods and the wrath they were able to unleash onto their world, and thus made them higher than humans. Does anyone else think so?
I agree with this argument because Gods have been always been given the upper hand. In Odysseus, Zeus the known as the father of all the gods so no one can oppose his orders. Meanwhile Poseidon has the power to just make Odysseus’s life miserable because of an action that offended him. It seems to me that most gods can get away with their actions because they are worshiped and people don’t try to question their orders because of what they are capable of doing. It doesn’t matter the hardships that the mortals may face, they can’t do anything to oppose a gods actions.