The Stories of Hamlet (Shakespeare) and the Odyssey (Homer)
The Stories of Hamlet (Shakespeare) and the Odyssey (Homer) Throughout the world of literature, of Homer’s The Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, revenge has been a common theme. Revenge can come in the form of many faces. It can manifest itself through pride, greed, carelessness, and murder. Revenge can provoke deep dark feelings towards others. These feelings lead to one not thinking about what’s moral but instead to just act instinctually. Revenge is expressed on behalf of a fatal occurrence. An incidence such as an unfavorable event involving an object or a loved one can ignite a fire in one’s inner being, and lead them to unconscious actions. There are those who go about revenge differently. Instead of acting instinctually they use their God-like reason to meticulously carry out their revenge. These are the ways in which the authors portray their characters throughout their epics. To the Greeks, life was all about striving to be the best you can be. They tried looking upon their actions and that of their neighbors to decide what was right and what was wrong. Greeks believed that there were superior deities to petition to. Although they were superior, they were not exactly good examples to look upon. These gods were merciless and unjust with their decisions and actions. For example: the story of Zeus and Sisyphus. Sisyphus helped the god of rivers to find his daughter and rescue her from being seduced by Zeus therefore Zeus punished Sisyphus in the afterlife. His punishment was to push a rock up a hill, and just as the top was almost reached, the rock would slip out of his hands and fall back down leading him to repeat the process all over. This punishment was unjust because Sisyphus did an action that to others would seem like a good cause, but to Zeus it was hybris. Hybris is a general insult to a god. Greeks revered their gods, but even though they had a higher power they would not follow their examples which made them to be more self-reliant and