[ExI] re Odyssey, hero

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 12:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Yes, it has a happy ending, if you like wide scale murder from a thug.
>
> Odysseus is a thug:  raider of villages, murderer, raper, thief.
>
> This is a hero?
>

By whose moral standards? I think that of that time, he was likely viewed
as a hero -- a very different kind of hero too since he used his wits
rather than brute force -- to succeed. And the happy ending is he gets
back, despite a god being against him and all the trials, manages to save
his wife and house.

Note, too, that this seems an extra-esthetics question: what's heroic or
moral is not determined by art but something removed from it. Of course,
someone like Ayn Rand might argue that the two are closely tied together.
She believed art is supposed to project the moral ideal. You might look at
her esthetics, since some of what she says seems to go along with your
tastes.

And is a hero -- in the sense of some titan, moral or otherwise --
necessary to have a happy ending? If the protagonists win in the end and
she or he is not too bad and the endeavor is not too repugnant to your
moral sensibilities -- in other words, it's not about a a sociopath wanting
to burn puppies alive getting his happy ending because he thwarts animals
lovers to live his dream -- then isn't that a happy ending? You know, like
in a rom-com?

Regards,

Dan
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