Hyperion & Lazarus: Kings, Rich Men, & Pitiless Gods - Hamlet & The Odyssey part 6
In Hamlet , the prince says that, compared to his Uncle Claudius, his dead father was “So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr” (1.2.143-4). [1] He compares his father to Hyperion and three other pagan gods (Jove, Mars, Mercury) with his mother in the closet scene. (3.4.66-8) What are the implications of comparing his father, the dead king, to Hyperion? Are some of the implications affirmed by another allusion, to the skin-sores of the beggar Lazarus? In The Odyssey, against his advice, Odysseus' men kill and eat the cattle of Hyperion/Helios. [2] The fact that they’re hungry sailors on a long journey home doesn’t matter so much to Hyperion as their disrespect. Are they not like bread-stealing Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, starving, to be pitied? [3] Hyperion seems ungenerous, greedy, unmerciful toward the hungry sailors. As punishment, they never make it home. Consider: Hyperion and the sailors resemble the Rich Man and L...