Blog #4- Achilles: Superhero or Super hero?

For this blog I want to talk about the discussion we had in class on Achilles.  I think in class most of us agreed that Achilles was not a superhero, except for one person, and I just want to share the reasons why I consider him more of a “super hero” rather than a “superhero”. You may notice that my reasons lean more towards why he is not a “superhero” and less towards why he is a “super hero” but it is my blog so I guess I can write what I want.

The main reason why I would consider Achilles a super hero is because to his people he was the ultimate war hero. People looked up to him and admired him for his strength and courage. When we talked about people we considered super heroes in class we mentioned these as major characteristics and named fire fighters and army soldiers as some examples so I think that Achilles characteristics would fit into this category.

One reason I do not consider him a superhero is because he basically started a war over a woman he barely knew and had no feelings for, this to me is not something a superhero would do. There have been superheroes that fight over the woman they care about but Achilles case it was different. He started a war, not just a fight, putting innocent people at risk and it all over someone he just met just to keep his pride.

 Another reason why I would not consider him a superhero is because he had to ask his mom to do his dirty work. He had to ask her for help because he could not do what he wanted himself and I do not think that is something a superhero would do. I have seen superheroes get help from others, like Robin helping Batman, but I don’t think superheroes ask for help because most of them seem too proud. Above all he asked her to hurt other people which is definitely not something a true superhero would do.

The final reason I have is that he is part god and I believe we talked about it in class that gods are not superheroes; at least I don’t think so. They seem to have an upper hand over superheroes I think and I feel that they should be in a separate category. So in the end I think Achilles would be either just a “super hero” or “god”.

WORD COUNT: 413

Blog #3: Oedipus: Tragic, but not Heroic

While reading Oedipus one of the main things I kept thinking about was how Oedipus was able to do so many horrific things and still mostly everyone ended up feeling sorry for him instead of hating him. First of all, he kills his own father. Oedipus goes off and kills his father along with many other people on his way to Thebes and nobody even looks for him because they are worried about something more important at the time. He also ended up sleeping with his mother, he may have not known, but in those times I am sure there was some sort of punishment for incestuous behavior. Nonetheless, when everyone found out it was he that put punishment on himself and I don’t believe they would have done anything if he hadn’t just because he was the king.

This is one reason that makes me not think of Oedipus as a superhero because I think that when a superhero does something wrong he would be looked down on by not only himself but also his entire society at least for a while. In most superhero movies I have seen the superhero has great amounts of followers, when he does something wrong they turn against him, but he ends up redeeming himself by doing something great. Oedipus never did that; he gave up. I do not think that superheroes ever give up even in the worst cases and that is another reason I do not think of him as a superhero. I think that this has a lot to do with the type of poem this is; the most epic tragedy.

If I understood correctly from what we talked about in class this is the greatest tragedy because of the fact that there is no happy beginning, no happy middle, or happy ending; it starts off bad and ends bad. I think for there to be a superhero someone would need to end up happy or there is not anything there that can be considered “super”.

In the end I really enjoyed reading this story but I would not consider Oedipus a superhero and I do not think his constituents did either. He killed his father and many others, slept with his mother, blinded himself, and never really did anything good for his people (nothing that was mentioned anyway). I would agree this is a great tragic story but a horrible superhero story.

WORD COUNT: 403