Family Legacies
While alive, people forge legacies from their reputations and actions, but keeping a single person’s legacy alive depends more upon the way that they die and who remembers them after their death than it depends upon their own deeds while alive. The people left behind after their death can choose what part of their story to tell and how to tell it. The legacy of a single person can get lost or altered once they die, but the legacy of a family that members pass down and uphold becomes harder to adapt. A family name often carries more weight than the name of a single person, and similarly the legacy and reputation of a family often carries more weight than that of a single person, which is why the characters in The Odyssey, Song
…show more content…
In both the epic poem Beowulf, and The Odyssey, family legacies intertwine with family debts. Beowulf travels from Geatland to the Danes to repay a debt that his father Ecgtheow owed to Hrothgar. Hrothgar announces that, “I used to know him when he was a young boy. / His father before him was called Ecgtheow. / … / This man is their son, / here to follow up on an old friendship” (Beowulf 372-373, 375-376). Through these lines it becomes clear that familial debt is important enough in Geat society to require a descendant to fulfill a debt owed by an earlier family member. In The Odyssey when talking about the plight he faces in relation to the suitors, Telemachus addresses the gods asking, “Leave me alone to pine away in anguish… / Unless, of course, you think my noble father Odysseus / did the Achaean army damage, deliberate harm, / and to pay me back you’d do me harm, deliberately” (2: 75-78). This illustrates how in ancient society family legacies of failure or cruelty could be punished, and how debts could be passed down to future generations. Telemachus accepted this without question because he understood that if a preceding family member did something worthy of punishment, future descendants must pay for their mistakes. (Insert quote about Cain and