Feeling really tired. Classes all day on an empty stomach (yeah im sure the violin is playing) and then work all night. And a daunting psychology test tomorrow. i think im gonna go to sleep soon, it's all just too much for me. I'll study a lil now and a lil tomorrow. It's not like I have anything else to do tomorrow. Sigh, this update is mainly to brush away my last entry. Sometimes they are pretty down, aren't they? I was thinking about it, and I think it's cuz the background is blue. heh. yes folks, it has nothing to do with my melancholy expression- it's all about the color scheme.

i keep forgetting to take a picture of the beautiful flowers i got on friday, i was going to put it up to show the world how nice it is to be me sometimes. Chocolates too. can't forget them! As if I could. It wasn't a bad weekend. In fact, (KNOCK ON WOOD) things are looking seemingly manageable so far this week. Found out that my friend Peter is in my lit recitation. That's nice. He's a philosophy major so that'll make all the class discussions smarter. No really, it will.

Everyone in my exploring teaching class said that they started rutgers with the intention of being a business major. looks like we win business school. haha. My friend Matt doesnt like science anymore, yeah he's a genetics major. Good times.

I wrote a great paper. I think I'll paste it here. Don't steal it from me or else you're just a big loser. Enjoy.


The Mark of Heroic Glory

In Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, heroic glory comes to those who, through feats of physical or mental prowess can successfully steal or mark the identity of another man. When a warrior vanquishes his foe and puts on his foe’s armor, he is gaining the heroic glory of victory. In a sense, man is immortalized through his destruction of other men. However, men in The Iliad and The Odyssey also become immortalized through the siring of men, identified by the mark of their father. A man is known as the “son of” his father, bearing the mark of his father as part of his own identity until the birth and marking of his own son brings him glory. Through the control and manipulation of life, a man gains glory and legacy. It is a balance of destruction and creation that is rewarded with the greatest glory and it is a difficult balance to achieve. Even Achilles’ fate included a choice of one glory over the other. A hero receives glory by destroying great men and then putting on their armor, but may die before siring a son, or have his son die young, shortening the shadow of his legacy. No man in The Iliad or The Odyssey achieves this balance except Odysseus, a point that suggests that he is the greatest of the heroes.

There is much destruction of life on the battlefield and in the streets of Troy as it is being sacked. After ten years of bloody war, much armor has been exchanged and many spoils awarded to the victors of battle. Achilles is a great hero, with a strong talent for cutting through men and sealing victory with his spear. He excels at destruction and chose his glory to be rewarded him because of his great dexterity at killing. Hector takes the armor that glorifies Patroclus as a way of claiming his kill and his glory, just as lesser warriors on both sides viciously destroy each other for immortality. The gods themselves are taken by the thrill of devastation, and play with the foolish appeal of destruction in the glory driven hearts of men. Their power and immortality then seem linked to their influence and perhaps control over inciting such flashes of desire.

Through the siring of a son, a man also achieves glory and legacy by marking the identity of another man. He asserts a presence, an ownership over his son that certifies authority while subverting his individual identity. It is this authority, this loyalty to which Priam calls Achilles despite the fact that the warrior has resigned himself to never passing on his mark. Hector’s death shortens Priam’s legacy and the death of the infant Astyanax ruins the possibility for Hector’s mark to be passed. Odysseus stands alone as the father bound to return to his son and see his legacy flourish.

Odysseus is the only hero who wins his immortality on the battlefield through the cunning deception and physical destruction of his foes and also asserting and prolonging his glorious legacy through his mark on his son Telemachus. The challenges he faces in The Iliad win him Achilles’ magnificent armor, which perhaps makes him the most glorified and envied of all of Greece, and the adventures that he endures on his trip home in The Odyssey seem to make the fulfillment of his glory doubtful, however the prowess he demonstrates in order to win his rightful place within his own hall is such a feat that he is without question the most cunning and clever hero in Homer’s epic.


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there you go, hope you loved it. feel encouraged to comment.