Theme Of Death In Greek Literature

In Greek mythology there a many different aspects which are emphasized through its literature, such as beauty, love, power, respect, loss and many more. The aspect of death is heavily pronounced aspect of beings, Gods and Goddesses. This characteristic of death is referred to in both “physical death and internal death” and is used in many contexts. This is evident I the Greek literature such as the poem Helen, by Hilda Doolittle, which is a short poem which describes Greece's reaction to Helen, the daughter of Zeus and Leda, who leaves her husband, Menelaus, for a Trojan prince names Paris, and the commotion that ensues in Greece. Doolittle take an interesting point of view of the Greek people and how they react to this. Another poem, “The …show more content…
Here the imagery used by the writer to refer to the ruins of life as being black, which is also associated with death, and connecting it to the city personifies the connection of death. The way in which the writer chose to use the word see, versus a past tense word like seen, makes this almost as a warning in this conversation like poem, essentially saying that there’s nothing but death in the city. This is important as to the event that occurred in the city of Alexandria, relate to epic occurrences of mass people dying, and the hint of being unable to leave it seems to be foreshadowing the result of death. This is further shown in stanza two where the lines states, “This city will always pursue you. You will walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods, will turn gray in these same houses. You will always end up in this city”. This is a large section of the poem which all talks about the connection of the protagonist and the city. The word, pursue shows the connection to no choice again and saying the city will always look for you can be interpreted as seeing that death will pursue you. You cannot leave the city, but the city will kill you, is an extremely intense message which reinforces the theme of death in the tone. Then the word usage of “grow old” and “turn gray” are talking about the future, and connect to death once again. …show more content…
The theme of death here is in a tone of telling the user how and why the city is going to kill him eventually, and that he has no choice about any of this, since it is his fate. Then the Cavafy “you’ve destroyed it”. This is a strong conclusion to the poem as it says to the protagonist that he is the one who ruined the city and everywhere else in the world, and therefore you have to face the consequences and die in this city. The perception of death being imminent if interesting as the city isn’t physically stopping the protagonist from leaving, but there is something inside of him holding him back from leaving, and that will be the cause of his