Madeline Berger, Blog Post #2

Through pages 161 through 167 of book 5 of the Odyssey, Homer develops a cycle in which Odysseus repeatedly switches back and forth between states of extreme desperation and of extreme confidence.

During his states of extreme desperation, Odysseus is convinced that he is about to die, claiming, “now what a wretched death I’m doomed to die!” and “my death-plunge in a flash, it’s certain now!” Despite how frequently he is certain of his approaching death, the gods prevent it every time; for example, “his bones [would have] crushed if the bright-eyed goddess Pallas had not inspired him now.” But what is noteworthy about the sequence of events is not the gods’ prevention of his death, but rather of, given the fact that he witnesses this prevention repetitively, his continually melodramatic responses to future seemingly death-producing experiences. The frequency with which Odysseus goes into the mindset of desperation (demonstrated by repetition on the part(s) of Homer and/or Fagles) despite the repeated evidence that the gods will protect him from death, shows that in times of danger, his emotions overrule his ability to observe patterns and deduce a logically probable outcome based on those patterns. In order to draw attention to the readiness with which Odysseus reverses his convictions on an emotional basis, Fagles uses the word “but” (over ten times in this capacity on these seven pages) to identify almost every moment of transition between the states of desperation and of confidence.

In lines 430-442, Fagles does not use a “but” when describing a reversal of mindset but identifies the definitiveness of that reversal in a more powerful way. Homer and/or Fagles convey(s) the seemingly eternal quality of Odysseus’s desperation by saying, “again and again the man foresaw his death” to illustrate a repetition of the visualization of his death. Homer breaks this repetition by replacing the visualized death with a new image: “landfall, just ahead.” Immediately after breaking the repetition of the state of desperation, Odysseus enters the state of confidence and experiences repetition of an opposite type: Homer and/or Fagles repeat(s) the word dawn twice, warm twice, and joy thrice. In the states of both desperation and of confidence, however, the word “again” is used twice, indicating that Odysseus repeats the convictions of his current mindset: that he becomes steadfastly loyal to them when he is in the mindset to which they belong.

Homer and/or Fagles use(s) repetition to convey both Odysseus’s all-encompassing faith in his current mindset and his ignorance of this quality.