Zeus complains in Book I of the Odyssey:
Ah how shameless--the way these mortals blame the gods.
From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,
but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,
compound their pains beyond their proper share (1.37-40).
What is Zeus saying? Is he right? Whose fault is it anyway that Odysseus has been wandering for ten years -- that the suitors are eating him out of house and home?
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Zeus is saying that there are basically two people at faults in the situations. The Gods, and the humans. For each choice it gives a different reality. For the gods, it is fate, but for the humans it is free will. Zeus probably believes that it is Odysseus’s fault for wandering 10 years and the suitors kicking him out of his house because it was Odysseus’s free will. But really, Odysseus most likely had to go to war and so that would be fate.
ReplyDeleteThere are other times where it really is fate that brings dilemmas among humans. For instance, when Odysseus had built the raft to sail across the ocean, Posiden came and ruined it. He was not happy with Odysseus being able to sail across his ocean unnoticed so he tried to kill him. Odysseus would have died if it weren’t for Ino who came and saved him by giving him an immortal scarf. So, obviously this example is fate.
But when Penelope kept unwinding her web at night and knitting at day, she was choosing free will. No gods had come to interfere with the choices that Penelope was making so it could not have been blamed on the Gods.
With the case of the suitors taking over Odysseus’s house it was most likely fate in the overall sense but free will in the sense of the suitors forcing their way in. The suitors were not told or forced to invade Penelope’s house but they did anyway just so they could have her. But if the gods had not sent Odysseus away to war and if Calypso had not trapped him in her cave for 7 years then the suitors would never have been able to invade.
In a sense I agree with what Kate wrote but I would like to elaborate on the fundamental idea of fate and free-will. The Achaeans believe in two opposing forces that affect the course of all reality. These forces are the will of humans, or free will, and the will of Gods, known as fate. Since the will imposed by gods cannot physically be confronted or accounted for, the forces of fate would naturally seem to be inevitable and beyond human control while the forces of human will seem to be entirely within our control. The fact is, the two forces are separately imposed, but are closely correlated with each other. Moreover, the forces of will are based off of characteristics and values of the individual expressing their will which is, in turn, based off of the will of others. Thus, the occurrences of reality are based off of a combination of forces of will caused by all individuals both Gods and Humans.
ReplyDeleteTo give an example, take Odysseus’s situation in book five of the Odyssey. After leaving the island where he was held captive by the goddess Calypso, Odysseus is bound for home on a handmade raft. The waters and the weather have allowed him smooth passage until he is observed by the vengeful god Poseidon who plots to kill Odysseus. Poseidon exclaims, “Outrageous! [Odysseus is] fated to escape his noose of pain that’s held him until now. Still. . . I’ll give that man a swamping fill of trouble!” Here, Poseidon has alluded to the fact that the other gods, including Zeus, have allowed, according to their will power, Odysseus to pass home and escape further hardship. Poseidon is intent on imposing his will on Odysseus and creates a violent storm to try to stop the hero. Poseidon would have no reason to be resentful towards Odysseus but for the fact that Odysseus had killed one of his sons. We can see how Poseidon’s fee will, seen as fate to humans, was imposed on the reality of Odysseus only because Odysseus had exercised his free will in killing Poseidon’s son. The forces of both the humans and the gods were moreover a result of their personal values and motives which may have included justice, revenge, and anger. Since neither a god’s nor a human’s actions and motives could be considered as ideal or perfect, we can see how subsequent problems arise between the imposing will of different individuals. In conclusion, we cannot say an occurrence is merely the arbitrary result of fate or the free will of humans; it is the result of forces of will that had been influenced by the opposing forces and actions of others that had furthermore been influenced by other realities.
Also, if you need the page number of my quote, it is page 161, lines 315 to 320.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, your most recent comment is a bit confusing and a little challenging to comprehend, so I am going to ask a quick question before I continue. So you are saying that it is not the fault of either the Gods or humans entirely, but that both of their chioces work together, in a way, to create a final product or outcome? If this is so, I agree completely. There are examples of humans making bad decisions out of free will that cause bad outcomes as well as Gods making decisions through fate that also caused different outcomes. A good example of this is Ajax’s death. The Gods allowed him to be free at first, which is fate, or the will of the Gods. Ajax, however, then used his freedom to insult the Gods and to brag to them about how great he did. This is his own free will, of course. Then the Gods came back and killed him in the sea, which is fate again. Again, I agree with you, Charlie, but I have another question. I want to know what this mention of realities is at the end of your comment. Do you mean that each person is seeing everything from a different reality or, in other words, a different perspective? I am just wondering if you (or anyone who knows what he is taliking about) could expand on that or clarify some of these points for me.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Charlie’s comments, to an extent. The problem I have with the whole conflict between fate and free will in the Odyssey is that every event in the epic seems to go along with some sort of prophecy. When Odyssues stabs Polyphemus, it seems like he has had a great idea, but really it just fulfills the prophecy that Telemus, the cylclops phrophet, made years ago. While Odysseus’ confinement on Calypso’s island for years seems like her decision, it allows for the prophecy made by Halitherses, that Odysseus will remain away from home for twenty years, to be carried out. It seems as if everyone has free will to an extent, but if things start to divert from the “plan” (fate), the situation is somehow altered to bring things back to the way they have been preordained to be.
ReplyDeleteIn this regard, even the gods appear to simply play the roles which fate prepared for them. Odysseus’s cockiness causes Polyphemus to curse him, but it is Poseidon’s anger at Odysseus that causes Odysseus to be kept away from his home for as long as prophesized. Furthermore, because Poseidon happens to go to Ethiopia and Athena implores Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso, Odysseus does get to return home, right on schedule with the prophecy.
The one even more complicated piece of the puzzle is the idea of actions and rewards/punishments. One can argue that Odysseus only suffered because he was cocky and taunted Polyphemus. The troubling part of this argument, at least in my opinion, is that it all goes along with the prophecy. In some sense, it appears that whatever course of action Odysseus had followed at that given moment, he still would have wandered for ten years, simply for a different reason. Free will only exists within the bounds of fate. Fate, in the Odyssey, is preordained, and all actions eventually result in it.
Andrew, your first question was exactly what I was talking about. Thanks for stated that plainly for everyone.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the previous posts, but I would like to take this discussion in a somewhat new direction. People often blame gods for what has happened, wether it be good or bad. I think what Zeus is stating is that mortals blame gods for the problem, when it is in fact the mortal that caused it. He portrays the gods as being the scapegoat for the human problems, which in a sense is true. Gods are essentially seen as being completely in power, and possessing the power to change someone’s fate, but not initially create it. In terms of fate, people do not accept that they may have been the cause of the problem, but rather they go on thinking it was fate. This could all be true, but I agree with Kate, Charlie, Andrew and Russell; that free-will also must be taken into consideration when there is a problem. From this, I interpret that people need to be held responsible for their actions. When something goes wrong in life, someone cannot just blame god or fate for what has happened. Humans ultimately make the final decision in regard to their actions, whether this decision is influenced by the gods or not. So basically, I agree with the previous posts, that it is mostly a mixture of these things that contribute to a situation. To summarize what I just said, it is rather difficult to determine whose fault it really is, because humans decide on which course of action they will take, but the gods have the power to influence or alter this. That is applied to this situation; it is not specifically one person or god’s fault. In addition to this mixture of free will and fate, it is also a series of events that lead up to the problem. Poseidon is doing his best to prevent Odysseus from returning home, which is an example of the interference that gods may impose that I mentioned before. I believe that the person at fault for Telemachus “being eaten out of his house and home” is ultimately himself, because he does not have the will to defend himself and eliminate the suitors from his home. At that, it could also be Odysseus’s fault for starting the whole situation by going to Troy and abandoning his family. In conclusion, I do not see one person to fully blame this whole situation on, but rather everyone contributed to this.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with all that Sara stated, but I would also like to say that Russell has raised an incredibly intriguing argument about the confines the idea of a prophecy puts on the idea of the free will of humans. I would like to try to give somewhat of an explanation as to how the preordained course of nature, as stated in a prophecy, can coexist with the free will of individuals. If we look back on the past, we can tell for sure what happened. Therefore, anything that was going to happen absolutely happened. If we think about it in this sense, fate is inevitable. The future is just as absolute as the past. So, in a way, free will doesn’t have any direct effect on what will inevitably happen. But if we look at the past, one still might say we had a choice in the decisions that we made. With all the actions we chose to do, the course of events all worked out in the logical way they did. An event can only be the result of the actions of individuals. The shear existence of a person, their feelings, and their actions has an influence on the existence of other phenomena even without the person being consciously aware. So, in the case of the Odyssey, everyone’s (Gods and humans) actions affect the actions of others. But, another question is raised; do the Gods take into account what the humans do? To an extent, the gods do consciously take into account what the humans do as we can see in the case of Poseidon’s fury at Odysseus, and furthermore, the gods actually seem to be just as human as humans are. By this, I mean that Gods are not perfect. Gods have feelings and motives and this plays out, in the world of the humans, as the seemingly unpredictability and inevitability of the course of nature. It may be true that Zeus is the exemplification of perfect justice and judgment, but if you look at gods such as Helios, we can see that gods respond to events with a certain humanlike intuition, motivation, and personal values even though their physical responses to human actions are uncontrollable and inevitable (such as a lighting strike or ocean storm). When the crew of Odysseus consumed the cattle of Helios’s prized herd, the gods imposed their fury on the crew. The gods physically respond to the actions of humans and in turn the humans are able to respond to the actions of the gods. As Sara stated, an event is really no one’s fault but it is the result of a complex web of interactions between all individuals and is also the result of a series of exact events. Getting back to the idea of a prophecy and the seemingly unchangeable nature of reality it is clear that no one can change the inevitability of nature, but the shear existence of a person and their actions can subconsciously or consciously affect the actions of Gods and other humans that in turn shape the course of reality that always falls within the confines of a prophecy. Within this complicated web of actions and resulting phenomena, the course of reality seems to be unpredictable, yet it always ends up working how it was preordained to.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Zeus is trying to say that they are all-powerful, and he should not be blamed. I think that it is both the humans and the God’s fault.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it is the god’s fault because they control the fate of the human’s as well as how they are to die, live etc. Odysseus could have died several times, but Athena came and helped him out, even if he didn’t know about it. For example, In book 13, Odysseus is finally back at his homeland, Ithaca, and he is ready to charge in to his lovely wife, Penelope. Athena stops him and says something along these lines; You will be killed, so lets make a plan to get back at the suitors. This is NOT a direct quote, but it is close. I think from this, Athena is choosing the fate of Odysseus, which proves that the gods have a role in the human’s lives.
I think that is the humans fault because the gods PUSH them, but they do not always follow their guidance. In book 11; Thesues states; “There you will find them grazing, herds and fat flocks, the cattle of Helios, god of sun who sees all, hears all things. Leave the beasts unharmed, your mind set on home, and you all may still reach Ithaca-bent with hardship, true-....” (255.122-127) This quotation shows that they pointed them in the right direction, but they ate the cattle anyway. So the disobeyed the gods, and then were severely punished for their actions. Finally, I think that they should have followed the god’s orders and respected the cattle of Helios, and it was wrong, but they did pay the consequences.