Aim: How can we evaluate Odysseus’ leadership through his decision-making in his encounter with “Scylla and Charybdis” in Homer’s Odyssey?
The Trolley Problem
To start this day’s class, Ms. Peterson introduced the Trolley Problem to the class. The Trolley Problem challenges our morals and priorities as we decide if we should save a group, or one person. The general scenario of this problem is asking us whether or not we would change the path of the train to hit one person, or leave the train alone for it to hit 5 people. The video provided in the lesson was a youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpf6KcWYyw
However, during the kahoot, the scenarios weren’t as simple as this. The kahoot questions added more details and background information for us to really make a decision on our own. For example, one of the scenarios given stated that the 5 people who are on one side of the track are escaped criminals, which influences my classmate’s mindset of saving a bigger group of people than the one person on the other track.
Overall, our classmates stated many different factors that influenced our decisions like saving more people (Bernice), the relationship you have with the people (Joanne), the background story of the people (Darren), and etc. Something that stood out to me was Wilson’s comment. He said something that indicated that he would rather be a bystander and not take any responsibility. This stood out to me because I didn’t think this can be one of the decisions we can make in these scenarios since I thought we had to choose if we wanted to save the 5 people or the 1 person.
Scylla and Charybdis
After some spirit reading, we learned more details about Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla and Charybdis occupy both ends of the Strait of Messina. Scylla is a sea monster that was turned from a beautiful nymph to a six-headed monster by Circe. She threatens any sailors that pass by her by eating each sailor with each head on a ship. Opposite of her, the monster, Charybdis, is envisioned as a whirlpool that sucks any ship that she encounters. Both monsters are a major obstacle in Odysseus’s journey, since he would have to utilize the Trolley Problem to minimize losses as much as possible.
Allusions
Allusions are indirect references to something like art and literature. We were given several examples of allusions such as Harry Potter and Star Wars to have a deeper understanding of the word.
Odysseus’s Choice
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OH77TtDun-Lkp1Oyq_BLisyQTIKKasr0/view?usp=sharing (link of the story “Scylla and Charybdis.”
For this part of the lesson, we were put into breakout groups with our respective group members to answer some questions about Odysseus’s decision to lead his men to Scylla. I started the conversation by saying, “I agree with Odysseus’s decisions because with Scylla, you can at least pray to be lucky and not get eaten by her, but with Charybdis, everyone would most definitely die.” My group members agreed with me. Moving on to the next question, “Would you have wanted to know which route Odysseus was leading you?”, Natalie stated that she agreed with his decision to keep the route from his men because the crewmates would’ve panicked or refused to go. So, in general, my team fully agreed with Odysseus’s decision, although we did have some doubts when we imagined ourselves in the place of the crewmates since we stated that we did want to know what we’re getting ourselves into.
Reflection
Today’s lesson was actually pretty interesting to learn. The Trolley Problem really made me question some of my moral decisions since any little detail can make me change my decision. Odysseus most likely has experienced this feeling multiple times in his journey as shown in today’s lesson story. Even if listening to the sound of his men being eaten pained him, he still made the right decision of saving the majority of his crewmates with Scylla rather than bring them on a suicide mission to Charybdis. In addition, it was pretty fun to guess what each allusion of the pictures Ms. Peterson showed us meant and it made me appreciate the little references authors/cartoonists make. From now on, I might be able to notice the little references that T.V. shows make and I can repeat the process of how I make a decision during the Trolley Problem kahoot (to try and minimize losses) to make some decisions in life.
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