Hope Menachery, #19, Period 5, December 7th 2020, Cycle 17
Freshmen 2021
Aim: How can an understanding of Greek myths and heroes prepare us for our examination of Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey?
Notes/Discussion for the day
Do Now
The Do Now from today's lesson instructed us to list the qualities of a hero, and use these qualities to form a working definition of the word hero. Many people had different qualities of their idea of a hero. Some of these were, humility, determination, courage, honesty, intelligence and more. My definition of a hero is somebody who puts the needs and concerns of other people before themselves. Someone who is empathetic to other people's issues and does everything in their power to relieve their concerns . Some students said that a hero was someone who saves other people from danger, others noted that heroes are selfless and put others' needs above their own. As we bounced ideas off one another, our class came together to and we combined our thoughts to form a general idea of what makes a hero
We then moved on to a discussion on the 3rd slide about any previous knowledge of Greek mythology. I was surprised at the amount of knowledge my classmates had on the subject. My classmates knew about the major gods, practices, and tales of Greek Mythology. Although I am interested in Greek Mythology I don't know a lot about it. We discussed the many forms of Greek Mythology, and where we learned it from. Some classmates said that they enjoyed things like the Percy Jackson series and some students said that they learned about this subject in school. We then went over the major gods in Greek Mythology.
❧ Zeus: the god of the sky, lightening and thunder and king of the gods on Mount Olympus.
❧ Athena: daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom, courage, and battle.
❧ Hades: god of the underworld/lord of the dead, his wife’s name is Persephone.
❧ Poseidon: god of the sea and earthquakes
Here's a cool video about some important gods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJCm8W5RZes
In the next slides, we discussed traditions centered around the gods, The slide goes on to say, Ancient cultures used mythology belief systems much the same way that people use modern
religion. Use the space to recall some of the goals and uses of religion. Learning about the traditions help me understand how the Greeks saw their gods and how they appreciated them. What was particularly interesting to me is that the Gods have human characteristics. For example Zeus’ temper. This is fascinating because in a lot of religions Gods are seen as perfect and un-human spirit like beings and they tend to stay out of human affairs while Greek gods enjoy it. This makes Greek folktales about these Gods fun to read because of the many stories about them and their experiences with human emotions and feelings. We discussed how these stories folktales were communicated through the Greeks.
On the next slides we learned about Homer’s poems and epics. Some important poems he wrote include the Iliad and the Odyssey. These poems were well respected by the Greeks and set an example for the word epic.
❧ An epic is a long, narrative poem about a national or legendary hero.
What makes a poem epic. We talked about this subject and went over aspects like divine intervention (gods), heroes, and long formal speeches (all ideas found on slide 9). A prompt was introduced for us to discuss, why would an author want to use these elements? Some points made by classmates that stuck out to me were that an author would want to use these elements to make their poetry more grand. By using a hero that has supernatural qualities like beauty and power, and making them good and loveable, you create a story that reaches out to people and makes them aspire to be like these characters.
Here is a video about Homer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVo225pUaSA
After finishing up our previous discussion, we moved on to the etymology and overuse of the word hero. We talked about the traditional hero, a beautiful, supernatural, benevolent god-like being and the contemporary version of a hero which is thrown around in today’s world. The slide gave us different perspectives of people who think that the word hero has virtually no meaning anymore because of the worn-out use of the word. We broke out into groups to discuss this idea further. My group tossed around ideas about whether the term hero is overused. I can say the do now really helped me with this activity because I referred back to my original definition of what a hero was to answer this question. Our group had all different ideas. Some said it was overused and they agreed with the statement that hero has no meaning anymore. The other half of us used this idea and formed our own. We think that the meaning of hero has just changed to be more modern. We said that anyone can have heroic characteristics and can use those traits to do heroic deeds. For example a firefighter, or a healthcare worker. At the end our group came together and formulated a combination of all of our ideas.
Here is an article if you are interested in learning more about this topic: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-main-ingredient/202003/is-everyone-hero-no
The next question asked us to compare today's heroes to the Ancient Greek ones we touched on earlier. We said that the heroes in Ancient Greece were supernatural and were god-like and today's heroes focus on more human-like qualities. Like we said before today’s heroes are more common and even are professions.
The last question I found particularly interesting. Are we as a society looking for a hero. In my group's opinion, no, we are not looking for a hero. As a society I think that we are more focused on all becoming heroes ourselves instead of relying on a single hero. We as a society are focusing on bettering ourselves to in turn make our world a better place.
We came back and discussed these ideas more as a class. Many people had the same thoughts and we formed combined answers to the questions presented.
Reflection
Today’s lesson was very eye opening. I was expecting essentially a history lesson. Looking at the slides before class I thought, we are just going to be learning about Ancient Greek heroes and gods that existed long ago. In short I was expecting that none of this information would pertain to today’s world. I was very surprised by the things I learned. I learned about the importance of Homer’s poetry in literature and what makes an epic . I learned about what makes a hero in real life and in literature. I realize the reason behind learning about this topic, the idea of this lesson is to inform us on the impact of ancient traditions and ideas on literary practices we use today. I learned how much the idea and meaning of the word hero has changed and evolved over time. The discussions we had in class today really boosted my confidence in my knowledge of greek mythology. Before today’s class I had basically no understanding of any greek mythology. I will use this knowledge in the future while reading books to understand what makes a hero and if what I’m reading qualifies as epic. To recap I learned a ton of things about Ancient Greece and its literature and how the ideas of that literature carry on to modern day and affect my understanding of these stories.
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