Discuss and Analyze: Inferno" by Dante and "The Odyssey" by Homer
The Homeric material from Book 11 of the Odyssey is an amazing look at mythology of the time. When Odysseus (Ulysses) encounters the many members of the underworld, he views a cross section of early Greek mythology, from Hercules to Agamemnon, Sisyphus, and Achilles. By surviving Hell, he also becomes a larger than life figure in mythology, and his ability to enter Hades shows his tremendous status in the "real" world. However, Dante wants to refute this view of Odysseus as a hero. In his Canto, he shows Odysseus (Ulysses) and his men traveling through the underworld to a whirlpool that sucks them down, rather than returning to their home. He wants to show them as violent warriors who worship gods and goddesses, rather than a "true" God. Homer makes his characters larger than life and heroic, but Dante refutes this, because he lives in Christian times, and the men of Homer's time could be considered Pagan. Dante refutes Homer's material and his view of heroes by disputing the ideal of kleos or glory. He finds it more glorious to find yourself spiritually and rise to Heaven, as he eventually does in his book. He wants people to stop worshipping people like Ulysses as heroes, and see them for the pagans that they were. The
Dante was telling and epic tale of good versus evil, and so was Homer. Who was right? Each author was right for the time he wrote, and reading both works gives a clearer picture of how history, attitudes, and even characters evolve and change over time and alteration of the world. In conclusion, reading these two works, written at very different times in history, shows how attitudes and thoughts can change over time. Kleos or glory is important to all heroes, but after his many adventures, and his experiences in the underworld, he realizes glory is not everything. He felt the myths were pagan at best, as was the practice of worshipping mythical gods and goddesses and sacrificing animals to appease these mythical beings. His dead mother greats him with the phrase, "'My child, how did you come to the undergloom / While you are still alive? / It is hard for the living / To reach these shores" (Homer 162). Dante is writing of the ultimate heaven and hell, and so, it is not surprising that he is critical of Homer and others like him, who worshipped gods and goddesses instead of one "true" God. Ulysses' was his "perfect hero, and he deserved a better fate than Dante concocted for him. He clearly feels they are not heroes, and he continues, "He answered me: 'There within are punished / Ulysses and Diomedes; thus together they go to / punishment as they went to anger. Ulysses urges his men to learn more and learn from their experiences. In Dante's time, Ulysses was a pagan who killed for the glory of it, had a shady past, left his family for 20 years, and worshipped pagan gods and committed sacrifices to those gods. He must know what has happened back home before he returns, and so, he visits the underworld, discovers who has died, and then makes decisions about what he will do when he finally reaches his home. Since Homer was writing from his own belief systems of the time, he would probably be shocked to see how Dante treated his hero and his other characters. They had faith that he would return, no matter what obstacles he had to face along the way.
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/ /,
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