As we have seen in multiple instances throughout the epic,
Athena plays a major role in Odysseus’s journey home. Not only does she aid him
in times of hardship, towards the end of the epic, she twists everything around
him to make it more entertaining for herself. I feel as though this is typical
of Greek mythology, with a morally ambiguous God/Goddess.
Toward
the beginning of the story Athena does everything to push along the story. She
knows what she wants to happen and she won’t settle for anything less than a
battle at the end. We see her eager for a battle, and the use of the word “gleaming”
to signify her desire for a “bloodbath.” In book 20 this turns into a blazing
eye to show the reader something big is about to go down, what Athena has been planning
for the whole book.
Odysseus
recognizes the help he receives from Athena in book 20 on page 411, where he
says, “There’s another worry that haunts me even more. / What if I kill them –
thanks to you and Zeus – / How do I run from under their avengers? / Show me
way, I ask you.” At this point, Zeus knows he receives help, and he even
expects further in the actual battle. On the next page, Athena is speaking
about how he should be sleeping and says, “So, surrender to sleep at last. What
a misery, / keeping watch through the night, wide awake - / you’ll soon come up
from under all your troubles.” At first I read this as though Athena was
watching him all night, and sees what he is going through and that he can’t
sleep. To which she, pretty much, replies, “It will be all OK, because I will
make it OK.” Even if I’m not reading this correctly to the point where Athena I
watching all night, she does still stay that she will make everything OK, which
is relevant to the main point of her constant aid.
When not
everything is going perfectly well in her plot, Athena makes Odysseus’s enemies
meaner, just to spice things up. She makes the suitors act especially mean just
to make sure that Odysseus doesn’t let them go.
On page 387, Homer narrates, “But Athena had no mind to let the brazen
suitors / hold back now from their heart-rending insults- / she meant to make
the anguish cut still deeper/ into the core of Laertes’ son Odysseus.” Athena
has this crazy desire for Odysseus to be very upset at the suitors because she
wants them to die. We talked about this a bit in class, how at first Athena’s
eyes “gleam” for battle. But at this point, Homer refers to her eyes as “Blazing,”
signifying a next-level change in desire.
At the
end of book 20, with the scene with the blood oozing meat, and ghostly faces,
Athena takes it over the top. The seer and prophet Theoclymenus says, “Oh I can
see it now- / the disaster closing on you all! There’s no escaping it, / no way
out – not for a single one of your suitors, / wild reckless fools, plotting
outrage here, / the halls of Odysseus, great and strong as a god!” Odysseus’s
halls here are compared to that of a god, this god being Athena. Athena has
done so much for Odysseus’s homecoming, that she was the main cause of the
entire last bloodbath. From Athena’s intervention with the suitor’s actions, we
know that Odysseus may not have been as harsh on the suitors as Athena was
herself through Odysseus. Athena has a
major roll and Homer constantly speaks about the major effect Athena had on the
final result, by comparing the work to that of a God, showing Athena’s constant
aid, as well as showing the contrast of what would have happened without Athena’s
over the top intervention.
It does often seem as if Athena is doing all this stuff mainly for herself. Especially when she takes action to ensure that Odysseus will be sufficiently riled to kill all the suitors, it is evident that she does not care so much about the actual guilt or fault placed on the suitors. She obviously believes they all must die, and does not want them to ruin her grand plan by "not deserving death."
ReplyDeleteThat said, keep in mind that Odysseus does have to do quite a bit himself. Remember that he shows some signs of weakness or fear during the Slaughter, and Athena basically says to him "Buck up, if you're not all macho and everything then you'll get no help from me."
I definitely agree that Athena is the driving force behind many of the events in this book. If it was not for her, Odysseus would probably still be on Calypso's island and Telemachus would still be living under the shadow of the suitors. Athena set a chain of events into motion by setting Odysseus free. But, she was not content to simply let things happen, she had to keep interfering with the lives of Odysseus and Telemachus to make sure everything turned out the way she wanted to and there was an entertaining slaughter. I think that if Athena had not interfered after setting him free, Odysseus probably would not have killed all the suitors. There doesn't seem to be a concrete reason for why the slaughter had to happen, as opposed to a simple execution of the ringleaders.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point when you note that we even see Athena influencing the suitors, to make them behave especially badly in (disguised) Odysseus's presence. It's a kind of troubling flipside to the question of how much her influence accounts for "heroic" actions of the protagonists: is she setting them up for slaughter, stoking Odysseus's anger by manipulating them into the position of villain? Or do we read it as this is exactly the kind of thing they've *been* doing all along, and she's just orchestrating a "demonstration" of it, so Odysseus has grounds for his outrage?
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