Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Is This the Face that Launched A Thousand Ships?
In Book Four of the Odyssey Helen, the most famous woman of the ancient world, whose beauty triggered the Trojan War, is now safely at home with her (first) husband Menelaus. Ten years after the Trojan War, how is she doing? What would Dr. Phil say about her marriage? What about her "drug habit"?
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I think that Helen, the fuel to the trojan war, is actually doing quite well 10 years after the war, at the same time she should feel stricken with grief.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, she was the cause of the whole Trojan War. Its not her fault she got betrothed against her will to Paris, but she should feel guilty for all the deaths the her capture caused to all the Greeks and Trojans. Also, she must feel terrible for the heroes that got lost or died on their journey back from troy. If it wasn't for her in the first place the heroes would never have left their homes to travel across the unforgiving sea to Troy.
I don't think she has a chronic drug habit. "Then the daughter of Zeus thought of something else. Into the mixing bowl from which they drank their wine she slipped in a drug, hearts ease...magic to make us all forget our pains."(page 131, lines 242-246) It is true she slipped an antidepressant into everyone's wine to make them forget their sorrows, but this was because on the previous page almost all the main characters shed tears over as a result of Menelaus' previous speech. I think the drug was to merely lighten the mood of her company. In a sense slipping the drug into everyone's wine is a way Helen can be a good host. In general, i don't think helen has a drug habit.
On a separate note, I think doctor Phil would say that Helen and Menelaus have worked their marriage out quite a bit, but with memories of the war and visits of war friends still present, prevents their marriage from being completely patched up. Helen states that when she saw Odysseus her heart had changed and she leapt with joy. Even though she was happy that she was rescued. At one point she eludes that she wouldn't have been happy to be rescued before her heart had change. This fact means that at one point she stopped loving Menelaus. Now though they both live under the same roof and appear by Telemachus' visit to be getting along fine.
I disagree because after reading book four where Helen is introduced, it seems that she is not happy and her marriage with Menelaus is not going well. The “abduction” of Helen that triggered the Trojan War, cannot entirely be blamed on Paris, because Helen must have been a willing participant in order for him to get her out of her palace and to Troy. Paris, an outsider of the palace, would not be able to navigate through the winding halls of the palace if Helen had not given him some clue as to which direction to go. There also must have been guards on duty at the time, especially given that the King Menelaus was gone, so if Helen had truly been fighting to break free from Paris, the guards would have been able to help her. However, since Paris did escape with Helen she must have an accomplice to help him along the way.
ReplyDeleteAlso in book four both Helen and Menelaus tell their version of the Trojan War. Helen recalls what grief she felt for all Aphrodite had done in sending her to Troy, and how she longed to return to her husband, “a man who lacked for neither brains nor beauty” (132). In this quotation, Helen compliments her husband to make it seem as though she did want to return with him. Conversely, when Menelaus shares his version of the story, he expresses that Helen tried to ruin their idea of the Trojan horse and secretly help the Trojans find them hiding in the horse. Menelaus argues, “three times you sauntered round our hollow ambush, feeling, stroking its flanks, challenging all our fighters, calling each by name – yours was the voice of all our long-lost wives” (133)! In this quotation, Menelaus recalls that Helen tried to seduce the men inside the horse to come out so that the Trojans would kill them.
Based on their differing stories, it would seem that their marriage is suffering. Menelaus is convinced that after all his efforts in battle to retrieve his “abducted” wife, she didn’t want to return home with him. He realizes that the lies within her story were to cover up her desire to stay with Paris, and have the Achaean army wiped out. Helen on the other hand is denying all of his claims and arguing that everything that happened was done without her consent. Dr. Phil would definitely say their marriage is falling apart because they have lies and affairs between them that they have not worked out after ten years.
Ten years after the Trojan War, Helen appears on the surface to be doing well. She is once again sitting beside Menelaus as Queen of Sparta, and appears to be happy in this role. Looking beyond the surface, however, reveals a woman who is perhaps still tortured over the events of the Trojan War. Helen was in part responsible for the war as she went willingly with Paris to Troy. As a result of her actions, thousands of brave men died, and thousands of women became widows and children became fatherless. The fact that Helen utilizes a drug to make her feel better, indicates that dealing with reality is often too painful for her. The extent of her drug habit is seen when she secretly puts the drug into the wine of her guests. She does this to make them feel better as they were reminiscing about the loss of the great Odysseus and others in the Trojan War, and thus were quite pained. To give a drug to someone without their knowledge, however, is quite deceitful and indicates that Helen does not even realize how wrong it is to do. The drug that she gives, and obviously also takes herself, is quite potent. It has the ability to ease a person’s pain to such an extent that even if they saw a beloved son slaughtered right before their eyes, it would not cause them distress.( line 250-251 pg 131) This obviously is a very strong mind altering drug and the fact that Helen utilizes it indicates that perhaps she needs that escape from her tortured heart and mind over what happened in the Trojan war. I think Dr. Phil would say that Helen has a drug habit that needs to be addressed immediately. She cannot hide from reality, but must face it and live with it. In order for her to face her demons, Dr. Phil would provide ongoing professional counseling that would help her deal with the pain of her past without resorting to drugs.
ReplyDeleteHelen seems to be doing very well after 10 years after she started the Trojan war. She has changed a lot since the events which caused the war. However, she still seems to think about the war at times because the war comes back to haunt her at times. She still cant get over the fact that she started the war and that she made so many people die during that time period. She made people leave Ithaca to go and fight a pointless war. Also, the fact that she is making a drug for herself to make herself feel good is not the right thing to do in her situation. All she has to think to herself is that the war is over, and even though she caused innocent lives to perrish, that she was young and immature then and that she has changed. Dr. Phil would not be happy with the use of all the drugs. He would get her some more help and try to get her unaddicted to these drugs and that the drug usage will cause problems in the marrage. She uses the drug to calm down her pain, which works put isnt the right path to take. She doesnt even know that what she is doing is wrong, she just thinks of doing whatever it takes to forget about the past.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Helen that no one seems to be saying is that she never asked for the Trojan War. She did run off with Paris, but she didn't do it with the intentions of indirectly killing so many people. She merely fell out of love with her husband and in love with Paris. Its not her fault that Paris and Hector chose to defend their honor and keep her in Troy
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I doubt she felt bad about their deaths, as claimed by Menelaus in the Odyssey. She thought that what she did was right, while in reality she was treated like property by Menelaus. He came to Troy to retrieve what he thought was his, and the Trojans stood in his way. War was the only option he could see, the only language he could understand. One might say he was the typical male power figure in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, but that is another topic.
Helen’s drug use was really not all that unusual for the time. Drugs are often used to induce or counteract hallucinogenic reactions (Hallucinating, seeing and hearing things that aren’t really there). In the Odyssey, Odysseus is given a magic herb by Hermes to thwart Circe’s spell of enthrallment. Helen drugs Menelaus’ court so that they are happy instead of reminiscing about the war. A psychologist would say that Helen thinks that what she is doing is for the greater happiness of everyone, even when those habits are typical of a drug abuser. She uses the drugs to avoid emotional stress, which must be a great influence on her life since she is unwillingly living with Menelaus, and the one she loves is either dead or gone.
I strongly believe that Helen is the sole cause of the Trojan War. The story goes that Sparta and Troy were just overcoming their differences and were becoming great allies. They were having a giant festival in Sparta to celebrate this peace between the two great countries. On the Trojans' voyage back to Troy, Prince Hector, the older brother, found that Prince Paris, the younger, had been having relations with Helen and the two had fallen in love. Once back in Tory they married, but the happiness did not last for long, as Menelaus had went to his brother Agamemnon, and the two had amassed a great army to challenge and destroy the city of Troy and bring back Helen. They succeeded and Helen was sent back to Sparta and back to Menelaus. The Trojan War would have never happened if it hadn't had been for Helen leaving her husband.
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