The Iliad and Odyssey ..

Iliad and Odyssey are two of Homer's great Greek epic poems that speaks about POWER, FATE, DESTINY, LOVE and PASSION. 

The Iliad is a Greek epic that reveals: power, revenge, sacrifice and love. The story is about how the love of Helen and Paris destroy the people and the kingdom of Troy. The Iliad exhibits different cases of the Greeks. One is that the women are inferior of their husbands; moreover, they do not have the right to decide on their own. They serve as slave for their husbands and as gift for other men. Another is that the gods and goddesses prophesied the lives of the Greeks; for example, how goddess Athena made Helen and Paris fall in love for each other. Without their gods, they cannot live. Another is that how Destiny and Fate affect the characters and their living in the story. FATE is used with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and that same sense of finality, projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out, is DESTINY. In other words, FATE relates to events of the past and is proven to be true and unalterable, whereas destiny relates to the probable to almost certain future (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny#Destiny_versus_fate). Lastly, the Greeks used wars to take revenge and to overcome one's kingdom. Therefore, these are some of the instances in the Iliad that leave mark in my mind.

The Odyssey is the sequel of the Iliad. The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year TROJAN WAR, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war. It is a story about the adventure and suffering of Odysseus which started when Poseidon, the god of sea, cursed him that he will suffer from what he had done to him. Moreover, goddess Athena guided him in his journey. Odysseus faced the temptation of Circe and Calypso; still, he proved his love and loyalty for his wife, Penelope. Despite everything that had happened to him and to his warriors, he never quit on his way back home. On the other hand, Penelope had suitors when Odysseus was believed to be dead. But she remained faithful to his husband's promise to her. The love of Odysseus and Penelope to each other hold on till the end. 

The Iliad and Odyssey symbolize LOVE and FAITH. This two stories changed my views in love that LOVE CONQUERS ALL! The main characters in the stories show their remarkable love for each other; such as, the love of Odysseus for his family most especially for his wife, the love of Penelope for Odysseus, the love of Telemachus for his unseen father, the love of Agamemnon for his daughter, the love of Helen for Paris and Paris for Helen. Therefore, Homer was able to present the Iliad and Odyssey as effective to the people that read and watched his works.