Comparison of Odyssey and Book I of Augustine's Confessions - Essay Example

 Comparison of Odyssey and Book I of Augustine's Confessions The Odyssey is a great book in which many characters are brought out and developed.  The most significant development that occurs in the epic is the development of Telemachus.  Telemachus is a very complex character that Homer develops from beginning to end.  From the beginning when he is a mere shadow of his father to near the end in which he is considered just as courageous.  Many factors influence Telemachus as he matures into a man.       Just an infant when his father left for Troy, Telemachus is still maturing when the Odyssey begins. He is wholly devoted to his mother and to maintaining his father’s estate, but he does not know how to protect them from the suitors. After all, it has only been a few years since he first realized what the suitors’ intentions were. His meeting with Athena in Book 1 changes things. Aside from improving his stature and bearing, she teaches him the responsibilities of a young prince. He soon becomes more assertive. He confronts the suitors and denounces the abuse of his estate, and when Penelope and Eurycleia become anxious or upset, he does not shy away from taking control. Not having any father figures as a child severely affects Telemachus.  He becomes a timid, shy and spineless boy who is greatly pampered by his mother.  He is not helped by being the son of a world-famous father- a difficult reputation to live up to.  This lack of motivation and assertive behavior does affect Telemachus attitude and maturation. Of the many proofs of Telemachus' maturation three are sufficient to render an accurate account of what virtues he gained. The gained virtues shown are courage, wisdom, and prudence. Courage is shown when Telemachus decides to go around Nestor's house rather than passing through it, for Telemachus goes out to sea knowing that an ambush awaits him. This wisdom is manifested in his knowledge that if he stops Nestor's hospitality will delay him even more. And prudence is shown in Telemachus' ability to control his desires for comfort in Nestor's house and his decision to endure hardship at sea. Next Telemachus' confidence and hospitality are shown when he takes in Theochlamenos the seer. In the beginning of the poem Telemachus is not confident enough in his ability to provide hospitality to Athena disguised as Mentor, but now Telemachus is happy to provide the seer with refuge. Another proof of Telemachus' virtues is his confidence in ordering his mother and her maids to comply with his will; their obedience shows us that he is worthy of respect. Thus Telemachus possesses the virtues necessary to be a ruler: courage, wisdom, prudence, confidence, and hospitality. Now we come to the re-encounter of father and son. They had spent twenty years away from each other enduring trials and tribulations that prepared them for their eventual encounter. Odysseus and Telemachus both arrived on the island of Ithaca within roughly the same time period. And they both, out of patience and wisdom, seek refuge in the swineherd's shelter. Odysseus' patience is demonstrated when he refrains from revealing himself to his son until Eumaius has left. When he and Telemachus first see each other, and before Telemachus knows that he is speaking to his father, an interesting event occurs in which demonstrates their humility and likeness to each other. The event involves Odysseus offering his seat to Telemachus and Telemachus refusal of the offer. The importance of this event is that Odysseus, who is disguised as a beggar, is a greater man than Telemachus and is humble enough to offer his seat. Odysseus and Telemachus now concentrate on the task at hand: killing the suitors. Even though Telemachus has been told of his father's great deeds all his life; he still doesn't believe that it is possible to overtake so many suitors. But Odysseus comforts him by saying that the gods are in their favor. Book I of Augustine's Confessions contains a remarkable account of child development. The maturation from infancy to later childhood is presented in its relation to the Trinitarian spiritual principle which animates human life, which is both the principle of its creation and the end which it seeks. Augustine's account is thus vibrant and exacting because it has hold of the objective principle of human subjectivity, because it knows the spiritual logic of the development of human reason and will. The Chapters vi-vii - Nature as the Immediate Unity of God and Man (Infancy) of St. Augustine deals with man's relation to nature is immediate so far as he is not aware of nature as created and ordered by divine law. Thus, infants are born into a divine order to which they relate only in terms of their natural needs. They are nurtured without any awareness of the ultimate source of the natural world and fit into this order naturally: "You granted me not to wish for more than you were giving, and to my nurses the desire to give me what you gave them" (I,vi,7). Their awareness of the order is expressed in their natural instincts: "For at that time I knew nothing more than how to suck and to be quieted by bodily delights, and to weep when I was physically uncomfortable" (I,vi,7). However, this relation to the divine order is an inadequate union, because man does not freely and self-consciously know and will his relation to God. The absence of language has as its result an absence of memory as one cannot store oneself as an object to oneself in the "warehouse" unless image be stabilized into idea. Augustine states: "I do not know where I came from but the consolations of your mercies upheld me, as I have heard from the parents of my flesh, him from whom and her in whom you formed me in time. For I do not remember" (I,vi,7). But while the infant is immersed in an unconscious natural immediacy, this immediacy is itself mediated not only by its divine source but also in history by the institutional order of the family. Family life requires self-sacrifice and the discipline of one's natural urges. Whereas natural comfort has an implicit spiritual end, in the family humans are engaged in an explicitly spiritual activity. So far as this division is at the level of reason, it expresses the distinction of the human infant from nature. However, so far as the child is not conscious of his own rationality, it is distinguished from the divine reason and self-consciousness. So while the emerging rationality of the infant cannot be satisfied in its merely natural relations, this rationality is not itself adequate to the divine principle which underlies it. As such, the development of human rationality in its finite and subjective dimension is temporal and historical ­ its life-stages come to be and pass away. This transition occurs because nature, like human reason, is not an end-in-itself and is divided in relation to its principle which is its origin and final cause. There is then in the infant a division between his being, living, and knowing, by contrast with God in whose Trinitarian substance and its self-relation all such division is comprehended. This distinction between reason and nature as yet not fully explicit in the child's consciousness is nevertheless the basis of sin. As an infant, one does not know the divine order but nevertheless thrusts one's own will against this order. Augustine speaks of three infantile sins: (a) unmeasured crying: the infant cries even for things that would harm him; (b) tantrums: the infant attempts to force people to obey him; (c) jealousy: the infant is unable adequately to share what is given in the created order. The importance of this division between reason and nature does not come out in its full subjective significance until Book Eight where its reconciliation is the structure of Augustine's conversion. The Confessions of St. Augustine Chapters viii-xx - Education and the Division of Reason and Nature (Childhood) deals with his emergence from a natural immersion and rational immaturity, it is necessary that the child move to an explicit distinction between his natural and rational desire. Such a division permits the child to make both his appetites and his ideas objects of his reflection and to will them freely. On Augustine's account, civic education has as its first role to discipline the individual in his natural immediacy and implicit rationality into an explicit opposition of reason and nature, an opposition which cannot be reconciled except the child be `educated' to an awareness of the spiritual telos of his own inward self-consciousness. What is primary here is that through education in reading and writing, the child is moved beyond the natural society of the family into the universality of the civil realm. The first stage of this development involves the child in a division between his particular pleasures and the universality of social rules. These are the sins of 'early childhood' in which one's natural will is directly thrust against what appears an externally imposed reason. Sin here consists of adherence to the natural pleasure one finds in games in opposition to the rational education one receives. As the child matures, however, he is able more fully to appropriate a content adequate to his own universal spiritual principle but likewise the division within his will is deepened. References: Augustine, City of God, Trs. Dods, Glenluce and Smith (New York: Random House Inc. 1950). Bloom, Harold ,  Homer's Odyssey: Edited and with an Introduction (NY, Chelsea House 1988) Doull, James. "What is Augustinian 'Sapientia'?", Dionysius 12 (1986) 61-67. Hankey, Wayne J. "Mind" in Augustine Through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, 563-7. Saint Augustine, Confessions, Tr. Henry Chadwick, (Oxford University Press, 1998). Starnes, Colin. Augustine's Conversion, (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1986). Read More