The holiday season seems to be a hard time for me to keep up on the old blog this year. There have been plenty of assignments to grade, I'm on my third T.A. this semester, I've had a tooth drilled and ground, just to name a little of what's been going on. There's been plenty to read too: N.T. Wright, Dune, the Harry Potter books, UnChristian, etc. Not much time for writing, video games, or nostalgia. I'm really looking forward to that two-week break. It'll be a good chance to get back to blogging!
Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
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