Rambling Heroes

This whole post originated from a really bad joke I made a few weeks ago about frat boys. You see, I was reading a book in The Odyssey where Poseidon rapes a woman and a few pages later Zeus rapes a woman. With all the talk lately about frat boys raping people, it made me think of a connection between the culture of the Greek gods and frat boys: essentially just that they both rape people. There's not much else to the joke, and the in between steps to show how frats are related to Greek gods are pretty much nonexistent, but you get the point. This terrible joke persisted with me throughout the rest of our discussions about The Odyssey  until I noticed that the suitors are kind of like frat boys (or at least the cultural stereotypes about them). It's a bit of a weird connection, but on a certain level there's definitely some parallels. For starters, it's been well established that there's a certain rape culture of entitlement to women in frats. To be fair, th

One of the things I noticed during the wanderings of Odysseus presentations is how prideful Odysseus is at times. Sometimes he's even too prideful, to the point where it only hurts him and everyone around him. By the time we reached book 13, it was no surprise to me that the Phaeacians got screwed over because that's just what happens to everyone Odysseus worked with on his journey. (Yes, the Phaeacians are different in this case, but that's beside the point.) The standout instance of Odysseus's excessive pride is after he's stabbed Polyphemus in the eye and feels a desperate need to reveal his real name. His men beg him to just shut up and leave quickly, but Odysseus taunts Polyphemus and reveals his true identity, therefore causing his entire return journey to be cursed by Poseidon. During his wanderings, his prideful nature doesn't necessarily fade at all: in book 10, Hermes helps him not fall prey to Circe's potion, but he still claims that he was th