The Notion of the "Other"
In your assignment on Gilgamesh, we dealt with the cultural concept of "hero." The "hero" embodies for a culture what it believes is the highest potential of a human being. You may have noticed that the Hebrew hero (gibbor) is far different from the Mesopotamian hero, for the Hebrews stressed that the highest human ability is based on a particular relationship to Yahweh.
There is a complementary concept that is the opposite of the "hero": the concept of the "other." You can call it what you want: monsters, villains, enemies, etc., but the "other" always represents behaviors and social problems that a culture regards as alien to itself, and therefore potentially dangerous or immoral. Cultures construct various people and monsters to serve as a kind of negative definition, saying in effect, "we aren't like those people", or, "we aren't like this monster."
Here is an example: the film Independence Day became one of the most popular box office successes of all time. It was the story of an alien invasion, and the aliens were as different from human beings as you can possibly imagine. Not only were they physically different, they had values that Americans don't normally regard as "American" values: they were violent, cold, and they simply used up resources without any concern for the environment. That is, the aliens were the opposite of what Americans believe themselves to be.
But here's the scary part: Americans, too, can be violent, cold, and use up resources with little concern for the future. So not only does the "other" represent negative qualities which we believe we don't have, sometimes a culture's concept of the "other" is a way of talking about negative qualities within the culture that no one wants to acknowledge are there. So, Independence Day could be viewed as a movie about how Americans are destroying the environment, but it presents the issue by taking that negative quality and assigning it to non-Americans, to "others," while viewers still get to feel good about themselves.
The Assignment
On this assignment you will focus on the character of Polyphemos from the Odyssey, in the extract in your reader. Polyphemos as a monster--but one that is almost human--represents the "other" in Homer's narrative, that is, he embodies negative values that Greeks would not identify with themselves. In other words, Polyphemos is the Greek way of saying, "We Greeks aren't like that."
Answer three questions in one or two paragraphs. Be sure to provide specific examples from the text.
1.What negative characteristics does Polyphemos represent, that is, what negative behaviors are represented by Polyphemos?
2. What are the positive opposites of those behaviors and values? In other words, since the Greeks would not identify themselves with Polyphemos's behaviors, what behaviors would they identify themselves with?
3. Do you think Odysseus is closer to the negative values and behaviors embodied by Polyphemos or the opposite positive values and behaviors that you identified in the second question?
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