Art

In Ancient Greece, Iliad is one of the most influential literary masterpiece of Homer and it is one of the pedagogy bases in which is also referred to as the correct use of instructive strategies. Iliad and Odyssey brought Greece out of its Dark Age and when they became famous for about 50 years after its initial release, they became one of the most read pieces in Greeks education. The whole world has seen the success of this one of the earliest and greatest epic poems in the Western world.  There are a lot of issues in studying the Iliad as well as the Odyssey, needless to say that Iliad has influenced a lot of great works including Hollywood films like John Waynes (1956) and Clint Eastwoods Unforgiven (1992). Let us try to look at the similarities of their plots.

The substance of heroism in the plot of both films are well showed. Homecoming, it is much explored in Ancient Greece after the war just like Agamemnon and Atreidae experienced. In The Searchers, the return of Ethan Edwards to his brothers house in Texas when the Comanche came and killed his brother, sister-in-law and nephew and burnt the homestead, his  nieces were kidnapped and with his rage, he began his five-year quest for his niece embarks the start of the movie. That was when Ethans character was shaped. Homecoming is always present in the plots when the protagonist returns home dramatically after a war or after a fight. William Munny of Unforgiven, returned home after he had finished his mission at a town in Wyoming. That was the conclusive part of the film, him returning to the isolated place to seek refuge to everything that he had committed in the past.

In every war or battle, there would always be a side that  claims  the glory of its victory but not for Achilles for he had won so much and being the most skilled warrior in his time. He hadnt feel so much of victory until he returned in the battle. Edwards on the other hand, felt the glory after he had claimed Debbie back and returned her to the civilization although he wanted to kill her when he found out that she had already been influenced with the Comanches ways. For Munny, he claimed back his glory upon letting the townsfolk withdrew the notion about his infamous reputation of killing women and children whenever he was drunk.
According to the Searchers as Odyssey, Fords protagonist, John Waynes Ethan Edwards, is in many ways a typical hero on a standard heroic journey, a mythic formula whose roots go back tot he foundational texts of Western literature Homers eighth century B.C.E. Iliad and Odyssey. It is indeed right for our imagery of a hero in the Ancient times would be seen on a heroic journey showing several traits that will show to where the protagonist is coming from. The European epic tradition continues to shape the ways Americans conceptualize themselves, their history, and above all their ideology, whether by assimilating themselves to or defining themselves against the cultural products of the ancient Mediterranean.

With regard to the protagonists issues for having their decisions formulated, both William Munny and Achilles are self questioning warriors who temporarily reject the culture of violence only to return to it after the death of their closest male friend, in which they are implicated. When Munny found out that Ned, (Morgan Freeman) died, he raged and went to the town to make the people who killed his friend suffer. That was what happened to Achilles upon receiving the news that Patroclus was killed by Hector, whom he unintentionally killed for he had mistaken Patroclus to Achilles.  Then on, Achilles returned to the battle scene, causing the death of Hector.

In Unforgiven, William Munny, during the first part of the movie and up to the last quarter of the film was depicted, lived on the outskirts of the Cheyenne. In his youth, he was a dangerous alcoholic man. He often times were very intoxicated that he would not remember the things that he had done whenever hes sober or simply he just chose not to remember. His reputation made him one of the feared men in the West. But when he met a woman named Claudia, he changed the way he lived and abandoned killing people, they started farming but when his wife died, Munny was left with an unsuccessful together with their two children in poverty. His friend, Ned was his companion throughout his life and he always stood for him. He was deeply troubled about his past and swore that he is not like that anymore. When Munny found out about Neds killings, he fought back with Little Bill. His cowboys, especially his own character, William Munny, are no longer the confident quasi-mechanical killers, unquestioning of their place in (or outside) the  moral  order of the Wild West, so often played by Eastwood in his earlier oeuvre.

Peoples and Eastwoods Unforgiven  belonged to the cultural and ideological tradition that the Iliad has helped to shape, as evidenced by popular culture as well as high art. Eastwood highlights the  an essential function of the WesternEpic itself, namely, reinscription of a set of Westernvalues that rests on a foundation of violence. Moreover, the film exposes-far more self-consciously than the epic does -the process by which unspeakable acts of violence become read, interpreted, and constructed as noble and transcendental in doing so, it calls these values into question, while simultaneously reaffirming their central place in our culture, in particular by bringing issues of revision and reinvention to the fore.

James Clauss (1999) looked at various Greek and roman mythological motifs in The Searchers, including parallels with the Homericepics Martin Winkler demonstrated a connection between The Searchers and both Greek tragedy and the Iliad, articulating, in particular, similarities between Ethan and Achilles (2001 and 2004). Wayne. Arthur Eckstein demonstrates that the protagonist is a darker and more complex character in Ford s film than in either LeMay s novel or Frank nugent s original screenplay.12 By darkening his protagonist and employing tropes rooted in the ancient mythological tradition, Ford creates an enigmatic hero who demonstrates a close kinship with Homer s Odyssey. Ethan Edwards was isolated by the violent individualism which defines his heroic status and torn by the neurotic split inherent in the archetype. Edwards belonged to neither civilized community nor with the savages, he fought for the behalf of his country. Odysseus. not only does ethan reflect Odysseus s distinctive brand of heroism, he also exhibits two particularly Odyssean traits that complicate his position as hero he is a wanderer who longs to be rooted in the community but is effectively estranged, and he demonstrates a moral ambiguity equally appropriate to a trickster or villain. This ambiguous heroism is well suited to the exploration of racial tensions with which Ford concerns himself in The Searchers.

In both Iliad and The Searchers, both protagonists demonstrate an ideal relationship to language. Ethan, on the contrary, is laconic. surface, these traits are contradictory, they represent analogous ideals for Greek and Western cultures respectively Greek society valued a balance between words and action, while a dedication to action and an aversion to long speeches is typical of Western heroes.

The protagonists also shared the same love secrecy just like Ethan who was in love with his brothers wife, Martha, that only thru some of their gestures were predictable for the state that the main character would show. On the other hand, the love interest of Achilles was Briseis, although she was the cousin of Hector, it didnt matter to Achilles but they needed to hide it when the Trojan War begun.

In the reading After the Rescue The Searchers, the Audience and Prime Cut (1972), it was indeed John Waynes greatest and grimmest role. Ethan Edward did allow Debbie to live, in the penultimate moment of the film and he returns her to civilization. However, John Ford nevertheless punishes Edwards for his feelings and conduct that in the final scene, he refused to allow Edwards to come inside the house that symbolizes civilization and human community, although all the other characters enter it. Instead, Edwards is shown in shadow, from inside the house. Standing alone in the doorway then he returns and wanders out into the dust. They also questioned about what happened to Debbie after she had been restored to civilization and after the last scene, was she ever been forgiven after the said rescue Just like in Iliad, Achilles was also punished for his actions because he had been too proud of his skill and showed no mercy to his enemies (aside from King Priam).

The women in all three stories, played a meaningful part in molding the heroes characters. Martha, was a love interest of Ethan in The Searchers, his unfulfilled love for her, it also conveys this attachment through some gestures in the early scenes by being alone in the screen and thinking seriously. In Iliad, Briseis and Helens characters were sort of similar to what happened to Debbie, all were captured and were needed to be rescued by the heroes. Unlike Debbie, Briseis and Helen were the love interests of Achilles and Paris. Helen somehow started the so called Trojan War if she didnt ran away with Paris. Achilles was not going to get killed (but the gods have already written it) if he didnt return for Briseis. In Unforgiven, William Munnys wife, Claudia, helped Munny to be a better man as well.

In The Seductive and Subversive Meta-Narrative of Unforgiven, Joseph H. Kupfer, the traditional Western justifies violence thematically and tructurally, thematically, the heroic gunman defends society or makes it possible against lawlessness. The structure of the Western The structure of the Western narrative is determined by violence as well. The irreducible core of the Western story-line is to provide a rationalizing framework which will explain and perhaps justify a spectacular act of violence  HYPERLINK httpmuse.jhu.edujournalsjournal_of_film_and_videov06060.3-4.kupfer.html(Buscombe 233). Structured around violence, the action is consummated in the climactic shootout. Armando Prats sees the shootout as the mythical culmination of all that has preceded it.
 
William Munny and Ethan Edwards are not heroic but Ranse Stoddard, the protagonist in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for he stood up to Liberty Valance twice and he later became a distinguihed governor and senator who wins statehood for the territory. Even when John Ford used Jouhn Waynes iconic status as a cowboy, in the self-consciously seductive manner. Clint Eastwoods cinematic persona is used by his film to provoke us to self-questioning by implicating us in the attraction of violence glorified in the legends of the West. The film also inverts the standard elements of the Western. The demand for justice that initiates the plot comes from a group that is marginalized in the classic Western prostitutes. Because the plot motivation stems from these traditionally subordinate and exploited women, the entire story feels tilted, off-center.

According to Kirsten Days  The Searchers  as Western Odyssey
Ethan Edwards heroism, too, is questionable. not only does he threaten
the integrity of his brother s home with the illicit love he feels for Martha
which she apparently returns25 he is also repeatedly suspected of criminal behavior. When he refuses to let Captain Clayton (Ward Bond) swear him
in as a deputy, Clayton asks suspiciously  you wanted for a crime, Ethan
Later, Clayton asks Ethan for his gun and initiates an arrest for murder, again
characterizing Ethan as an outlaw. Clayton also works as a foil for Ethan
in much the same way Achilles does for Odysseus former comrades-in-
arms, Clayton now serves as the religious and military leader of the white
settlers, while Ethan stands stubbornly outside the community s religious
and administrative framework. additionally, Ford situates Ethan as a villain.

Revisionist, alternative Westerns cut the larger-than-life classic Western down to size. Sometimes these films take a pessimistic view of society and the place of violence within it. Sometimes they debunk particular elements of the Western such as the noble motives of the hero. For instance, Sergio Leones so-called spaghetti Westerns attacked th tradition by undermining normative motives of western heroes HYPERLINK httpmuse.jhu.edujournalsjournal_of_film_and_videov06060.3-4.kupfer.html (Slotkin 629)
 HYPERLINK httpmuse.jhu.edujournalsjournal_of_film_and_videov06060.3-4.kupfer.htmlBoth Unwanted and The Searchers were critically acclaimed films in the 20th Century, almost all their similarities with Iliad are inevitable, it just lead to a conclusion that people in different times views society in the same manner and they just have different settings and instances. Be it Iliads Achilles, The Searchers Ethan Edwards and Unforgivens William Munny, all of them had the same calling which was to protect the people that they needed to.