Midterm Essays

3. Homer and Rhetoric
Was Homer a rhetorician? No. Do we study his speech as rhetoric? Yes. This is something I want to address because I think sometimes we get this misconception that in order to give a rhetorical speech, one must be a rhetorician. This is simply not the case. Does one need to be a designated politician in order to be an influential leader? No. This is I think the situation we are looking at with Homer. Homer was simply trying to relay to us a message, a message of heroism, a good life, nobility, etc. All of which the Greeks truly committed their lives to. The aristocrats were especially prone to this type of belief.

Homer also includes gods in his poems often times portrayed as real characters. This was appealing to the Greeks, because I feel like it personified the gods, because it was such an abstract concept. But here is the funny thing, we don't even know if Homer was a real person, or if he really was the one to write these ancient works. As a historian/poet, if Homer really did exist, his work is remarkable, and uses all of rhetorical methods to appeal to the readers. The Odyssey and The Iliad are masterpieces that help us understand better the way they wrote in that time.

It is likely that very few people were literate at that time, and the writings of Homer give us special insight into a time unfamiliar to us, and a time that we can learn much from. Ultimately Homer wrote rhetorical masterpieces of his time, and that is all we really have, and thus we should do all we can to familiarize ourselves with his writings.

Also one last point. Although many rhetoricians did not consider poetry a skill, but in all reality the line between poetry and rhetoric at times may run quite thin.


1. The Irrational
Here is a list of synonyms for the word irrational that I will reference to help us understand better what it means: unreasonable, illogical, groundless, baseless, unfounded, and unjustifiable. It is a brilliant concept to connect to mankind through use of drama, because drama has a way of drawing the audience in emotionally (pathos). Why is it that we justify Gru, from the movie Despicable Me, when much of his behavior is illegal, illogical, and unreasonable? We make an emotional connection with characters, such as Electra, and then the unreasonable becomes reasonable, and  the irrational rational.

Drama is a fantastic means to show how the irrational, not only can be rational, but also is a necessary aspect of society. This is the intent of Euripides in his tragedy "The Bacchae" to show how rationality (order) and irrationality (tyranny) not only can, but must coexist for a society to be able to function properly. This method is scary in some ways because it can convince people to do things that are not morally correct, or socially accepted.

Murder is not an accepted deed in our society, and I don't believe it ever really has been, but "it's only a video game. I'm not really murdering that person." Now all of a sudden, Electra murdering her mother is not a bad thing because she has every right, and we have connected with her emotionally. We make these kinds of irrational decisions everyday, and typically we don't notice because it is masked in a similar way the Greeks masked it, by appealing to pathos.