The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Homer’

I know that you must be wondering,”What an odd name for a post.” I do not think that I have ever related the story behind the name Mentor.

In Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus also known as Ulysses, the Greek King of Ithaca, left to fight in the 10-year Trojan War, he left his old friend Mentor in charge of his household and his young son Telemachus. Mentor as himself is not mentioned that much in the Odyssey, which I have read. However, it is interesting that in this epic poem, the immortal Goddess Athena, disguises herself as Mentor, and encourages Telemachus to stand up to the men who are courting his mother Penelope. The goddess also encourages the youth  to go abroad to seek word about what has happened to his father, who at the time had now been away for almost 20 years.

Athena also acts as a “mentor” to Odyssey as he goes through the many trials during a very saga-filled return to Ithaca after the war. The modern usage of mentor – trusted friend, counsellor, guide, or teacher – first appeared in François Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Telemaque in 1699 Wikipedia  (2009).

Have you ever read Homer’s Odyssey? What are your thoughts? Who was more of a mentor to Telemachus, Mentor or Athena? In the modern sense of the word, who could you mentor, who could you take under your wings? Though this isn’t a book review, I do recommend that you read Homer’s Odyssey, it’s quite a tale. This book teaches a great lesson in perseverance. Many obstacles were placed in front of Odyssey, which delayed his return home and it makes you wonder how much is enough. How persistent and resilient are you?

What are your thoughts on Greek Gods and Goddesses? Overall, do you think that they were fair in the way they dealt with others? If you haven’t read any Greek Mythology, it would be worth it if you checked them out on Wikipedia. I recently saw Clash of the Titans, which involved some Greek characters as well, have you seen that movie?

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Recently I received a course catalog from The Teaching Company in the mail and I took my time going through it. Anyone who knows me knows that I am big on continuous learning. I particularly like this catalog because they didn’t have the regular run-of-the-mill courses, and many of them fascinated me — Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear, Understanding the Brain, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, Understanding Complexity, Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft. Aren’t these fantastic names for courses?

I was interested in nearly all the courses listed, but that’s not practical. One course which fascinated me was Life Lessons from the Great Books. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful course to take? And the amazing thing is that the catalog has courses on DVD, with each lecture 30 minutes long. Most people can sit down for 30 minutes, couldn’t you dedicate 30 minutes each day for a course, if you could apply the concepts?

The following are the Course Lecture Titles. I must admit that most of those books I have never read, but after reading the copy in the catalog I wanted to take the course and I wanted to read the books. Has that ever happened to you?

1. On Providence (Annotated), Seneca
2. The Gospel of John (The Gospel of John)
3. Conscience, Boethius, (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Companion: Quotations from the Speeches, Essays, and Books of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Martin Luther King
4. The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
5. Night (Oprah’s Book Club), Elie Wiesel
6. Schweitzer—Out of My Life and Thought
7. The Sufferings of Young Werther, Goethe
8. Hamlet, Shakespeare
9. Ajax, Sophocles
10. Epistle VII (The Seventh Letter (Illustrated)), Plato
11. “On Old Age”, (Treatises on Friendship and Old Age) Cicero
12. The Penitent, Isaac Bashevis Singer
13. Alcestis, Euripides (Three Plays of Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, The Bachae)
14. Medea, Euripides
15. Tristan And Isolde, Von Strasburg
16. Antony and Cleopatra (Folger Shakespeare Library), Shakespeare
17. Macbeth, Shakespeare
18. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
19. The Odyssey, Homer
20. Philoctetes (Greek Tragedy in New Translations), Sophocles
21. Chivalric Adventure, The Song of Roland (Penguin Classics)
22. Chivalric Romance, The Nibelungenlied: Prose Translation (Penguin Classics)
23. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806
24. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph: The Complete 1922 Text, T. E. Lawrence
25. The Eleven Comedies – Volume 1,The 11 Comedies – Volume 2
26. Menander : The Grouch, Desperately Seeking Justice, Closely Cropped Locks, the Girl from Samos, the Shield (Penn Greek Drama Series), Menander
27. Mandragola, Machiavelli
28. The Praise of Folly, Erasmus
29. Utopia
30. Animal Farm, (Animal Farm and 1984) George Orwell
31. The Jewish War: Revised Edition (Penguin Classics), Josephus
32. Cato a Tragedy, in Five Acts, Joseph Addison
33. George Washington’s Farewell Address
34. Abraham Lincoln, George Patton—War
35. An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt
36. The Wisdom of Great Books

Professor J Rufus Fears from the University of Oklahoma teaches the DVD course Life Lessons from the Great Books. According to the website of The Teaching Company which sells the courses:

“What Makes a Book “Great”?

According to Professor Fears, four characteristics define a Great Book:

• Its focus on great themes such as love, courage, and patriotism
• Its composition in a noble language
• Its ability to speak to readers across the ages
• Its ability to speak to readers not as groups, but as individuals”

How many of the books above have you read? Would you willingly want to read them? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

Thirty Great Free eBooks for Innovators
Adventures in Learning: Books to Read in 2012
2011 Books for Mentoring

Book links are affiliate links.

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