Discussion: Achilles and Hector are heroic
Discussion: Achilles and Hector are heroic
Choose one of the questions below for your essay response, or discuss another topic of interest based on our class’ literary readings. You are not required to include outside research for this essay.
Your paper should be 5 –6 typed, double-spaced pages. Please see the (attached) English Department’s rubric for the grading criteria. I have sample essay outlines for questions #1 – 6 and will post these detailed outlines throughout the next few weeks.
1) Achilles set the model for a kind of heroism still immensely influential in the imagination of the West. His rage, egotism, and the motives that drive his tragic, obsessive behavior are compelling. Who is the true hero of the Iliad Achilles or Hector?
2)Both Achilles and Hector are heroic, courageous, and vulnerable. Both realize that they are fated to die, although they are helped by the gods. The proud runner and the Trojan warrior have strengths of character and possess positive characteristics as well as flaws. Compare and contrast these two Homeric heroes.
3) Consider the presentation of the gods in Homer’s epic poem. What is the gods’ role? Do they control humans? Do humans have free will? Are the gods simply fickle, or do they support some essential order?
4) Although Medea is a woman, Euripides has presented her as a figure previously thought of as exclusively male – a hero. Analyze her character in the play as a combination of the salient qualities of Achilles.
5) Sophocles’ Antigone is both admirable and troubling as a heroine, and despite characters’ statements to the contrary, she reveals the power and influence that women in the Greek culture held.
She defies Creon, the guard, and the law of Thebes, and through her actions, she gains the sympathy of of the populace, her sister, Tiresias, and Haimon. While her determination and independence are admirable, Antigone’s apparently self-destructive resignation (she does not try to escape her punishment or to deny the charges that are made against her) lends a complexity to her character that is troubling. Are you sympathetic to her character?
6) Despite their marked differences, Sophocles’ Antigone and Creon also share similarities as both are stubbornly loyal to their values, both are powerful figures, and both characters are outsiders. Compare and contrast these two characters from Sophocles’ Antigone.7)
Compare the chorus in the two Greek tragedies.lecture
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
