Odysseus and the repetition of power

Odysseus and the Repetition of Power Societies cannot exist without power. Its effects and presence are natural to human nature, its existence, inseparable from our condition. To deplore or downplay its significance is to smash a window on every culture that has ever existed, every government that has ever claimed land, and to forego its study is to accept blindness. In all human interaction, there is a chance for love, a chance for anger, a chance for any of an infinite set of possible outcomes, yet there is always a structure and playing field to the meeting of two people, and its only rule is power. Burning somebody’s house down is power, as is bringing your child home through love, and conjuring a tidal wave is power, as is having the ability to persuade through words. No society can escape the desire to glorify control; as soon as any one thing is celebrated more than another, power is created, and it does not appear quietly. It is birthed whenever any two people or things are different, and any discrepancy maintains and nurtures it. Its presence, because of its ubiquity, is not interesting; its path of manifestation, however, is. Following this, in Homer’s The Odyssey, and in the present day, power is multifaceted; e

Odysseus"tm innate abilities were not set by the goddess, but the course of his travels is constantly bending under her attention. He might as well say, "husband of Penelope," but at no point in the story does he ever choose to. Homer chose to use a constant, implicit repetition of death and destruction in shaping Odysseus, and in doing so, he created a character whose image depends completely upon the epic world for its sustenance, a character who is repetitiously one-sided from any other angle. Repetition of this sort is crucial to epic literature. Despite this, there is ample evidence that Athena has merely wrought and begotten her own image of Odysseus from the primal clay of a young man who might have otherwise done something completely different with his life. In fact, her very first phrase is "where has it gone, Odysseus, your power" Nowhere is it more evident than here that Athena"tms personal view of power relates directly to war. Against today"tms standards, though, he ranks unequivocally as a fighter and destroyer. Odysseus is certainly praised for his sharp mind, but the praise takes the form of loaded rhetoric with a brutal slant. The mention of any character is almost always followed by a short interjection on his history and personality, and this epithet will stick persistently for as long as anybody remembers it. Everything around Odysseus is built on war and forged from pain and physical force. The Odyssey does its best to make sure that the droning, repetitious idea of Odysseus primarily contains the pillar of death, and his character is defined in large part by his ability to destroy. Even though most of Odysseus"tm triumphs come by way of brains, the story sometimes dispenses with this formality and instead presents us with the raw and uncut Odysseus, sacker of cities, pillager of women. The fact that he uses wit and guile to his advantage in combat is what solidifies his heroic status. The development of Odysseus"tm character illustrates this practice perfectly; whenever the wanderer is spoken of, a literary repetition of his barbaric past and unique ability to kill people and sack villages is always close at hand. His escapades on Ismarus are straightforward, without device, and completely unjust.