Literary Analysis Of Aristophanes And Plato's 'Symposium'

Symposium by its very definition is a drinking party held after a banquet in ancient Greece. “The Symposium” by Plato is set place after a heavy day of drinking, where all the men are still recovering from their hangovers. They all decide to go easy for the night and just tell stories. Aristophanes and Socrates both tell stories about love, but both have very different meanings. Aristophanes, who is a comic playwright tells a story in which he talks about the myth of soulmates and love, and his meaning of love. Socrates then tells a story of his version of love, and what he believes it to be. Both Aristophanes and Socrates stories gives interesting ideas, in Aristophanes Male/Male pairing is favored, and with Socrates love is for an object, and to …show more content…
These people rebelled and caused the gods trouble, so out of punishment the gods cut them in half and separated them. These people then spend their entire lives trying to find their other halves, or their soulmates. In order to be together, the gods allowed them to have sexual intercourse to be closer to their other half. This speech of Aristophanes is interesting because it encourages relationships between two males which was the strongest of the pairs. During ancient Greek time, it was considered a right of passage in a way for a young boy to be close with an older man, that may or may not have been sexual. It was a way for the men to be shown the way and taught. This is why the stronger of those pairs were man and boy. In today’s society some people do not see male/male as masculine or bold, which is what Aristophanes did. Another thing interesting about Aristophanes speech is that as a comic playwright, he wanted everyone to take what he was saying seriously, even though it is a joyous, uplifting story to hear. By having people take him seriously it is as if his motive was to have the audience find a deeper more romantic perspective on love. The myth has a