Chapter 5: A Contrast

A record was broken in my life today.
While watching "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King"for the third time in my life, I actually found myself wiping away tears. Folks, this has NEVER happened before!!! A movie made me cry!!!!!Incredible!!!
Also, while watching the movie, I noticed something. Here is its account:
Due to the fact that I have a test on Homer's " Iliad" coming up very soon, I had been endeavouring to acquaint myself with its contents since this morning.And to be completely honest, I found it appalling!!!! There is no word in Elvish, Entish or the Tongues of Men to describe the kind of disgust it wrought in me.
How can a book propagating such intense hatred, be considered the finest work of Western literature?? Maybe I'm missing the point here, but aren't we benumbed by the horrors of human hatred enough ?
I do not claim to be an idealist. War is a reality. Has been since the beginning of human history, and will be till the end of it. I have seen enough of war movies as well as live coverage of violence, read enough of newspapers and heard many news bulletins, to be numbed to its effects by now, like the rest of my generation. People die, and people live, and people kill to survive. Fails to have a significant impact on me.
What does not, however, is genocide. Indiscriminate mass slaughter. Murder of innocents. I suppose the numbing down hasn't been strong enough to deprive me of outrage at this yet. And I am afraid this is what I found in the "Iliad".
To even wish to wipe out an entire people, to burn their homes, desecrate their corpses, make slaves of their innocents and mock them in their defeat, sickens me. As I hope it would, any remotely decent human being.
How can anyone hate so much? Is it possible? For vengeance, yes, I accept hatred can take a murderous form. But here, what do they hate for? A petty issue of pride. For the abduction of one woman, an entire race must needs be wiped out. A race that did not will the abduction in the first place. Now this is just a bit too thick.
And what kind of gods did these Greeks believe in? Gods who for even pettier sakes must abandon mercy and willingly aid and abet manslaughter??!!!! I wonder, if it was believed that these gods created the human race, what kind of immortal sadists are they that they find joy in pitting one against the other and watching with glee a shower of blood? Even helping it on its way? It's enough to make all belief in any religion null and void!!!
I found solace in LOTR after this. Yes, I was treated to yet another spectacle of blood and gore, but the best thing was, pride had no part to play in it. Especially not sickening hubris! War is futile. Men realize this in both, the "Iliad" and LOTR. But in one, pride destroys all while in the other, hope remains after sacrifice to build on. There is a reason to fight in LOTR. As Sam tells Frodo, "There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and that's worth fighting for." In the "Iliad" whatever good there might have been in the world before the war, is effectively destroyed in the course of it.
Historians say the war in Troy never happened. I should sincerely hope so. Human life must not be slain at the altar of human ego. But the fact that the "Iliad" is hailed as the foundational work for the rest of Western literature, I suppose, says a lot about us. Some critics say it is a pacifist epic. How then could it have so effectively portrayed the unslakeable bloodlust of men that has succeeded it in the centuries that have followed?