The Role of the Supernatural, Essay Example

The classic tales of The Iliad and Sakuntala share several important features, even as each represents vastly different cultures and differs in ways based on cultural emphasis.  The Greek Iliad is Western in a very real sense in that the story’s scope is large; men and women interact personally, but the fates of nations hang in the balance, and human interactions, from warfare to family relationships, have immense repercussions on the societies.  With Sakuntala, the core is more intimate.  Kingship in ancient India is pivotal to the story, but the personal is more the focus, so the tale has more a quality of myth or parable.  What unites the two classic works beyond differences, however, is the complex interaction between the supernatural and the human in each.  Gods, goddesses, demons, and other non-human forces do not affect the action from distances; instead, they move within the narratives as heightened characters and elements within the human adventures.

This quality of interaction is famously within The Iliad, as supernatural forces consistently mix with mortal efforts and agendas.  At the tale’s beginning, when Chryses is defied by Agamemnon, he responds with a direct appeal to the god Apollo, and the appeal is answered: “He came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder” (Iliad 128).  Not only does the supernatural interact with the human, moreover, but it does so in very “human” ways; gods and goddesses exhibit characteristics that consistently reflect human desires and motives, and they act based on love, rage, and jealousy as humans do.

Then, a critical factor in Greek and Roman myth is lineage, as many men are born of human and divine parents, and this complicates the relationships of all.  Achilles, for example, is the son of the nymph Thetis and the mortal Peleus, and this factor powerfully reinforces intimate relationships between the supernatural and the mortal.  Great hero that her is, Achilles understands the advantage of divine parentage, and he pursues this.  Thetis also reacts as a human mother when her son begs her help: “I will go to the snowy heights of Olympus, and tell this tale to Jove” (Iliad  133). Throughout the entire epic, the supernatural, while possessing power far beyond the human, always appears centered on human affairs, and this emphasizes the practical relations between them.

Similarly, Sakuntala reveals how closely tied the supernatural is to the human.  The former takes many forms, many of them based on nature and natural forces, but it is nonetheless beyond human ability.  At the same time, the human is far from powerless against it.  The hermits, for example, require the king’s presence to counter the supernatural: “In the absence of our Superior, the great sage Kanwa, evil demons are disturbing our sacrificial rites” (Sakuntala  400).  This indicates that human greatness nears the supernatural or may be equal to it, which in turn reinforces how both elements affect one another.  Then, and echoing the divine parentage of Greek myth, the Indian also describes supernatural forces as concerned with the creation of the mortal.  When the king describes Sakuntala, there is a specific and divine, or supernatural, account given of her beauty: “Man’s all-wise Maker, wishing to create a faultless form, whose matchless symmetry should far transcend Creation’s choicest works” (397).

Reading The Iliad and Sakuntala, consequently, reveals an interesting dimension to classic tales.  Eastern or Western, each relies heavily on the supernatural.  They differ in terms of impact, as the Western tends to promote large-scale and epic events, and the Eastern is more intimate.  At the same time, there is a common element more strongly uniting them, in that gods, or the supernatural, consistently move within human landscapes and affairs in specific and personal ways.  In both The Iliad and Sakuntala, then, the supernatural is virtually only an extension of the natural.

Works Cited

Silva, L. (Ed.)  World Literature Anthology: Through the Renaissance.  USA:  American Public University Electronic Press, 2011.  Web.