THE ILIAD BY HOMERAND HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR:

How we use Greek mythology

How does “It’s Greek To Me” relate to The Iliad?

How does “It’s Greek To Me” relate to The Iliad? “ What we mean in speaking of ‘myth’ in

general is story, the ability of story to explain ourselves to ourselves in ways that physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry-all very highly useful and informative in their own right-can’t.” – Excerpt from Chapter 9 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, "It's Greek To Me”

How does “It’s Greek To Me” relate to The Iliad?

How does “It’s Greek To Me” relate to The Iliad? In The Iliad, there is a mythological

explanation for the victory of the Greeks over Troy in the Trojan War. Back at that time, religion was constituted of the things we consider today to be “myths” and so people used the gods to explain how the Greeks could have won the war and how the war could have been so… unhumanly bloody.

Common themes between “It’s Greek To Me” and The Iliad

Common themes between “It’s Greek To Me” and The Iliad “It’s Greek To Me” Themes that are recurring in “It’s Greek To Me”

include being able to discern what stories we have today from the Greek myths that they come from, noticing how Greek mythologies influence our culture and our literary traditions as well as our history, and noticing the types of stylistic devices that authors of the Greek times used to express what was then considered by them to be epics of true, actual gods. Often times, Greek mythology-as mentioned in “It’s Greek To Me”- is considered to be heroic and maintains its popularity throughout the ages because they involve “everyman” type of characters. For example, many of the fabled heroes and supporting characters of ancient Greek mythology and of the various short stories and things were farmers, merchants, fishermen, and smiths. More importantly, they were sometimes humans but more often human/god mixes. One can interpret what that means, but perhaps the authors of those books made so many characters half god and half human to show a little bit of symbolism: that a little piece of the gods are in all of us. That sort of idea would be supported (or at least elaborated upon from a different perspective) when Luke 17:21 of the Christian Holy Bible was written.

The Iliad The Iliad’s themes that are recurring are very

similar to what “It’s Greek To Me” talk about. There is a lot of action and a lot of heroic natured battles between some of the characters, but a lot of that is to explain historical events that the people of the ancient world may have had no way of knowing the real truth about. The epic served to heal some of the ancient Greek’s ignorance about worldly issues and other things. The book is also dripping with pathos, the emotional stylistic device. There is quite a lot of fighting between all of the characters in the novel, but it isn’t black and white. The characters on one side that are fighting the other side aren’t necessarily completely against the other side or completely with their side. For instance, Achilles does not want to fight for Agamemnon because of the fact that the King has taken away his bride and has shown to be a cruel and sometimes callous leader. However, when his inaction leads indirectly to the death of his best friend Patroclus. He doesn’t much care for the side he is fighting for, but he cares enough and hates the other side enough to fight for it. Also, Achilles is half-human. He is the hero of The Iliad and that would have been an inspiration to common people back in that day.

I learned that a lot of our stories today and our cultural and even political institutions have relations back to Greek mythology from thousands and thousands of years ago. Stories that we tell, general plot lines in stories, certain outcomes and moral things you learn from the story, and how we run our daily lives have a lot of roots in ancient Greek culture.

What did I learn from reading “It’s Greek to Me”?

I learned that for the people of ancient Greece, this was not just some fable that they told to keep themselves entertained, although it kept that purpose too. It served as a historical text to explain the history of one important, small chunk of the world. It let people believe that, like Achilles, they could have a small chunk of the gods within them too.

What did I learn from reading The Iliad?