Iliad vs. Insurgent

When reading literature as ancient and classic as Homer's Iliad, I think it is interesting and important to find parallels of the rhetoric tools used in the ancient work to things we read, listen to, and watch today. That is why we study these classics. To see how it has influenced our culture in the present day.

Kevin's post particularly intrigued me about Minerva using rhetoric to convince Ulysses to stay at the war with the army. She convinces him to stay by being aware of kairos and appealing to her audience (Ulysses), that if he leaves, everyone who has already fought will have died in vain. She also uses a bit of a pathetic appeal here, or "guilt trip" as Isaac put it, by appealing to emotion to get what she wanted and persuade Ulysses to stay. Kekoa noted this as an ethical appeal - appealing to Ulysses' character.

Recently, I watched the movie Insurgent (second in the Divergent series) for the first time. At the end, Tris Prior, the heroine, goes back into the control of the evil tyrant Jeanine to open up a box that contains a secret message. Others don't want Tris to go back because she has already escaped. But she is persuaded to go back because mother died protecting what was in the box. Tris knows that she must find out the message inside so that her mother's death was not in vain.

I find it interesting to see a rhetorical similarity, be it however small, between the Iliad from the 6th-8th century B.C., to the movie Insurgent from the year 2015. Both Ulysses and Tris made a choice to go back or stay in the face of battle and adversity so someone else's death would not be for nothing. An ethical appeal makes them realize that they cannot allow their character to be compromised by allowing a death to go in vain.

Some may think that this topic is a little too far fetched for this blog post, but I think the entire purpose of studying rhetorical tools from classics such as Homer, is to then think about them in our day and find similarities and make connections.