Where is dramatic irony in The Odyssey and what does this show about Odysseus' character?
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Much of the second half of Homer's The Odyssey is crafted to take advantage of a literary device called dramatic irony.
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that one or more of the characters do not. It is a way for writers to create a certain kind of suspense on the part of the reader. However, this suspense technique requires more skill to achieve than the typical kind of “whodunit” suspense that we often encounter in stories.
Since the audience already knows the important information, the suspense comes from wondering how characters will react to the situation at hand. This is only effective if we are interested in the characters, and this requires good characterization on the part of the writer.
In The Odyssey, Homer creates dramatic irony in several places, especially late in the story when Odysseus has returned to Ithaca, disguised by Athena (also referred to as Minerva), as a poor beggar. This situation is ripe for some fine dramatic irony, because the reader already knows that the beggar is Odysseus, while most of the characters do not.
At one point, Odysseus is in his house as a beggar. No one except Telemachus knows his true identity. One of the maids, Melantho, who has proven to be unfaithful to Penelope in favor of the suitors, has the opportunity to treat Odysseus with kindness, but says this to him instead:
Stranger, do you mean to plague us by hanging about the house all night and spying upon the women? Be off, you wretch, outside, and eat your supper there, or you shall be driven out with a firebrand.
To hear Odysseus’ servant speak to him this way creates tension for the reader. What will happen to Melantho as a result of this behavior? How does this make Odysseus feel? Later, Melantho and several other unfaithful servants will be hanged as a result of their behavior.
Perhaps the most emotional dramatic irony comes when Odysseus (also called Ulysses in some translations) reveals himself to Telemachus as his father. In situations like this, dramatic irony has heightened impact, as the reader anticipates the climactic scene, which is delayed for a while. The reader has seen Telemachus interact with the disguised Odysseus for awhile. Naturally suspense has been building during this time, as the reader wonders when and how Odysseus will reveal himself, and how Telemachus will react. When Odysseus finally does reveal his true identity, Telemachus doesn’t believe him, and Odysseus responds with:
Telemachus, you ought not to be so immeasurably astonished at my being really here. There is no other Ulysses who will come hereafter. Such as I am, it is I, who after long wandering and much hardship have got home in the twentieth year to my own country. What you wonder at is the work of the redoubtable goddess Minerva, who does with me whatever she will, for she can do what she pleases. At one moment she makes me like a beggar, and the next I am a young man with good clothes on my back; it is an easy matter for the gods who live in heaven to make any man look either rich or poor.
The Italian city-states were a political phenomenon of small independent states mostly in the central and northern Italian Peninsula between the 9th and the 15th centuries.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, urban settlements in Italy generally enjoyed a greater continuity than in the rest of western Europe. Many of these towns were survivors of earlier Etruscan, Umbrian and Roman towns which had existed within the Roman Empire. The republican institutions of Rome had also survived. Some feudal lords existed with a servile labour force and huge tracts of land, but by the 11th century, many cities, including Venice, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Cremona, Siena, Città di Castello, Perugia, and many others, had become large trading metropoles, able to obtain independence from
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That those who do not distinguish between law and religion are quick to judge and condemn others.
Explanation:
The passage we are analyzing was taken from the novel "The Scarlet Letter", by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As we know, the book tells the fictional story of a woman who is greatly punished for being a single mother. Sleeping with someone and getting pregnant, even if both people involved were not married to other people, was regarded as adultery in puritan Boston. In the passage, the author shows the people who were ready to condemn did so because they believed they were doing what was right. They saw no distinction between religion and law. And they would apply any type of punishment with the same severity, since all crimes, no matter how big or small, were an offense to their religious principles, were a sin. As is stated in the book:
<em>[...] there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders at the scaffold.</em>