Blogger 23 Eric Lu Period 7 5/17/2021 Day C

 11 RL SP: Odyssey: Scylla & Charybdis

Aim: How can we evaluate Odysseus’ leadership through his decision-making in his encounter with “Scylla and Charybdis” in Homer’s Odyssey?

Do Now: Would you sacrifice one person in order to save five other people? 

At the beginning of class, we watched a video on the trolley problem, where a trolley was on a path to kill 5 workers. There was no time to warn the workers, but there was a switch which would divert the train to another path that would make it stop but there was a problem: there was a person on that path. The problem was, would you pull the switch and kill 5 people or not do anything and kill 5 people. The answer was pretty obvious among the students. After the video, we did a Kahoot, which made us consider this problem a different way, since each question came with its separate situation. For instance, the path with one person had your best friend, or a worker with an incurable disease. This shed light on Odysseus’s morality which we later covered in class.

After the Kahoot, we read about Charybdis and Scylla, who were the two monsters of the Strait of Messina. Scylla had 6 heads and would pick up men from any ship that passed through there. Charybdis was a monster who assumed the form of a whirlpool, sucking in ships and drowning the men. Odysseus had to make a decision to pick which side of the Strait to go. Circe had advised Odysseus to lose 6 of his men to Scylla rather than lose his whole crew. Odysseus asked Circe if he could escape Charybdis and fight off Scylla, to which Circe reprimands his stubbornness.

We then talked about allusions, which was an indirect reference to any piece of literature, art, or text. We then went over examples of allusions, such as “So Long, Farewell” from Family Guy, which alluded to the song So Long Farewell from the Sound of music. We also looked at pictures of movie posters, which had Bart Wars (Star Wars), The Simpsons (The Sopranos) and Melting Simpsons faces (Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory.)

We then ended the class with some review of Charybdis, Scylla and the Trolley Problem by viewing the crossing of the Strait of Messina from Odysseus’ shoes.

During today's lesson, I learned more about morality, decisions people make because of it, and the impact it has on society. I learned that sometimes people have to make decisions that can protect many over protecting one. I also learned that if you changed the description from the one worker in the trolley problem, you would have different outcomes. After reading the passage on Charybdis and Scylla, I now understand why Odysseus had to kill six of his men by going through the Strait of Messina on Scylla's side rather than Charybdis's side, after trying to defy Circe's advice to go through Scylla rather than Charybdis. After going over allusions and some examples of it, I now know and understand more about why an author chooses to put allusions to famous pieces of work, such as allusions to movies, books, and even paintings. Overall, I learned that decisions are a moral topic, any decision can show the true colors of one's morality, and the reason authors include allusions is to make the audience more connected to the work of art/literature they are viewing by including references that is popular.