Happiness today is what defines the quality of someone's life. Someone living in poverty isn't likely to be as happy as someone with a stable financial system. While Odysseus was with Circe on her island, he was happy; that's why he stayed there. His life was good while living on Circe's island because he had everything he needed. Another example of this is seen in Penelope. She's been waiting for Odysseus to return for twenty years and is extremely depressed about him not being there. The grief in her life and waiting for Odysseus is causing her life to be extremely low-quality.
Our country is in war today; I think we can all agree with that statement. Do we ever really hear of soldiers coming back from war and achieving ultimate fame and glory for what they've done overseas? From what I've seen of our country, my opinion is that most of the country doesn't support the war! Odysseus receives the utmost glory from his people after returning from war. He is showered in gifts, offered places to stay, and everyone loves him. However, it's not so much the same in our day-to-day lives. I read an article from an Atlanta-based newspaper about a division returning home. It was about a paragraph long and didn't even mention the soldiers by name. (The link at the bottom of this page is to the article if you'd like to read it). In the span of a few thousand years, we've gone from nearly worshipping our generals and soldiers to treating like they're extremely common and almost saying that their good deeds are useless.
Although Kleos was a very good way of living in Homer's time, I think it would be completely irrelevant and useless in today's society. How could we live off of getting glory when nobody even gives it anymore?
http://gpbnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/soldiers-return-from-iraq.html
2 comments:
I agree with your observation of how Kleos is not at all relevant to daily life in the aspect of war and glory. However, I think that if Kleos is put into the context of something like, "winning a game or race" then our modern day life fits into it exquisitely. We all know Michael Phelps and now that he has won many Olympic metal's. He receives much glory for his earnings which show that we do have Kleos in our modern day it just fits into our lives differently!
I agree with you Kayla about not being able to achieve glory in war. Nowadays it is possible to achieve "glory" in war but it doesn't bring the same reprecussions as from back when Homer was around. So I agree with you that Kleos cannot be put into that context.
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