Odysseus’ Views on Death and Heroism through His Dialogue with the Ghost of Achilles

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_49How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Odysseus; Achilles; Views on Death; Views on Heroism; Odyssey

Abstract

Odysseus envied Achilles. When he was alive, all Achilles worshiped him as a God. Even in Hades, his spirit had the same status among the dead. And Achilles said, “I would rather be a slave to a poor master in the world than a king in the underworld”. His ideas have changed dramatically, he is eager to live, even if there is no honor, he is not willing to die gloriously. The Odyssey offers a different view of heroism and death. Death in the Odyssey plays an important role in narrative and characterization, reflecting a more complex concept of heroism slightly different from that of the Iliad. Different from Achilles in the Iliad, Odysseus avoids death, returns to Ichynka, rebuilds the order of family and society, and then preserves his identity as a hero, which reflects his heroic view different from that of Iliad.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ruize Qi
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/03/28
TI  - Odysseus’ Views on Death and Heroism through His Dialogue with the Ghost of Achilles
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Social Sciences and Educational Development (ICOSSED 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 490
EP  - 497
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_49
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_49
ID  - Qi2025
ER  -