#4

Dear Diary,

This week in class we read Philoctetes and talked about the Dehumanization people use at times when they are in positions of power over others. Studying for class this week was different than it usually is for me, since I had a lot more to take care of at home these past two weeks than usual but once I saw that this was written like The Iliad and The Odyssey I looked up the sparknotes and summaries of it first so I can have an understanding of what I am about to read before going in since the language is a little difficult to comprehend at times then read it so can get the deeper details that the summaries didn’t go into detail about. Reading this made me look at Odysseus way differently, and I don’t even know why because I knew these things about him already about how he is conniving and a con and all that, and how he does whatever he has to do to win like I have talked about this in so many of my journals. I remember not really messing with Odyesseus when we were reading The Iliad but I don’t remember why because I forgot the entire story and do not remember what was happening in it, but then I let the Odyssey convince me that he is a good man somehow. I felt sympathetic for him … he was trapped for yearsss after not being home for yearssssss, he had suitors tryna take his girl and his home, and he ain’t never met his son and he’s 20(?) years old and thenn him coming back having that cool taking back of his kingdom was exciting because I liked the suitors even less than I liked Odysseus. So, I’m not going to get upset at myself for having a slip up but reading Philoctetes reminded me of my true feelings for this imaginated man. Him trying to convince Neoptolemus so hard of deceiving Phil was annoying, especially when he was telling him about how basically it won’t matter what he does to deceive Philoctetes because when they win the war they can rewrite history however they want to to make them look good and that was the one scene that reminded me of my Odysseus disdain because that rang too close to home and made me think of the Odyssey and made me think that the series of events described in it may or may not be accurate. I don’t even think these plays are written by the same person, but it doesn’t matter because it is the same person and his character is consistent through all the stories. The story of the Trojan war might be wrong also, now I am questioning everything that I have read because I don’t know if this is one of those rewritten history pieces he was talking about. Not Philoctetes but the Iliad and the Odyssey. I could also be thinking too hard into this. I liked Philoctetes a lot because it is a story about someone doing the morally correct thing and still winning in the end which is not something that I saw mostly in the other stories. A story that can be related to and applied to a variety of situations even today. This also goes along with what we are talking about in my Ethics class about Moral judgement with situations where there are morals that will be broken no matter which option you choose and it comes down to which are more important to you not to break and I can see this being one of those cases. Neoptolemus has a commitment to Odysseus and the country he is fighting for to do whatever he can in his power to help them when the war but he also has a commitment to Philoctetes not to break his trust and friendship after he showed him much xenia. I would say the morals that he is debating with in this situation would be loyalty and betrayal and whether not betraying the community is more important to him than staying loyal to a personal connection he has made. Ultimately of course he chooses Phil, that leads to them not betraying the community as well and I believe that his choices made this story enjoyable for me. It went in a whole different direction than I thought the story was going to go in to be honest but that was probably why it was so good to me. Especially with how everyone else treated Philoctetes like he was less than. While I understood that he did something he probably was not supposed to, I don’t understand why EVERYONE was so nasty to him? Was it part of his punishment? Was it because of the conditions he was in? I understand that dehumanization was the theme we were exploring this week, and also the situations we talked about when people dehumanize others but I don’t understand why. Why was the first person to show him any kindness in the past 10 years Neoptolemus? Weren’t the greek people the ones that had much xenia? Things that surprised me about this was how welcoming Philoctetes was to Neoptolemus and the Chorus because he had been there for 10 or so years and everyone who had come into contact with him treated him like he was undeserving so you could assume that he would in return start acting nasty just because that was how everyone treated him, but I guess the adverse could also be assumed he would be still hospitable and welcoming because he wanted someone to finally accept him as a friend. When he woke up and was surprised to still see Neoptolemus there my heart broke. I found the irony funny in the part where Heracles told Philoctetes to go to war funny because like he was doing all of that *not* to go to war just to end up having to.

With the theme and lesson of the story being about friendship and honesty, I believe that they knew that Odysseus was not the person they needed to try and bring this message and theme across sincerely so they brought in a person who could, especially juxtaposed to Odysseus. He is well known across these myths, for his track record of being everything but honest to gain his many victories so for someone way less known to come into play and not as much notoriety as Odysseus and be true to himself and others makes the ideas the play wanted to come across to its audience very clear.

In this story, the mentorship seemed like it was mutual between Philoctetes and Neoptolemus where they both learned something from each other. Their mentorship is way different than Athena’s, but similar to Bindi and Okwus because Athenas was definitely intentional while Bindi and Okwu’s bond happened accidentally and they were on opposite sides at first just like Neoptolemus’ and Phil’s relationship. Going off of what Thomas C. Foster said in How To Read Literature Like A Professor Binti was most likely inspired by Philoctetes since there are no more original stories.