For Odysseus and his men, the loss of Helios, the sun, symbolizes a loss of C. Hope.
In poetry, light ( such as the sun, the moon, candles, stars) often symbolizes good, hope, and freedom.
In the lines <em>"Never the flaming eye of Helios lights on those men at morning, when he climbs the sky of stars, nor in descending earthward out of heaven" </em>the reflected idea is that they do not see the sunrise or sunset anymore, thus they are eventually condemned to a total loss of light, that is to say, hope.
<span>"His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter,' and studied it with the zeal of a book-worm.""Rip Van Winkle," 1994 edition, 1-2
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What is the question tho?
