The Use Of Imagery And Irony Used In Ovid's Metamorphos

Obama is our leader of our nation; He gives the orders for killing. And orders are what many powerful people try to give. “That is why Osama Bin Laden is dead.” His orders are what Jove tries to give to Olympus. He has dominance over us causing possible violence, just like gods at Olympus have control over others and cause gruesome violence. Throughout the story of Metamorphosis, there is careless tone used from the story of The Fighting of Perseus, horrific imagery used from the story of Acteon, and irony used from the story of The Four Ages to really explain the dominance of these gods. A Roman mythological writer, Ovid, uses hasty tone, disturbing imagery, and irony to show the audience, readers from a variety of ages, that the recurring

In the disgusting story of “Acteon” a man who has no words that can come out of him, also called a swallow, gets caught accidently seeing Diana, a very powerful, incredibly good looking goddess, naked and metamorphosizes into an animal and gets eaten up by his own pets. His pets are dogs that are very vicious and have evil names (i.e. “Mountaineer:, “The Killer:, etc.). Very close to the end, nobody, the dogs, listen to Acteon and while they eat him up, this is what he says, “He groans,/ making a sound not human, but a sound/ no stag could utter either, and the ridges/ are filled with that heart-breaking kind of moaning” (3.238-240). While breezing through the words, you can tell that Ovid is really describing the sounds of Acteon using incredibly hasty imagery. He does this by giving examples of how “no one else could make that sound” and that “the sounds were so hard to hear because they were gross.” With specific words like “gross” and “hard to hear,” Ovid is giving clues to show that the violence is really terrible in this situating. Since the imagery is so violent, you start to realize that Diana was the one who caused this whole incident because she changed him and then suddenly the dogs wouldn’t listen. This shows that with grueling imagery, you think back to what Diana did and then realized that she has power over anyone.

Throughout the simple, yet explanatory story of “The Four Ages,” Ovid explains how our world started off just absolutely perfectly and ended so...BAD. In the very last age, “The Iron Age,” Ovid shows much violence with irony in this quote, “Jove struck them down with thunderbolts, and the bulk of those huge bodies lay on the earth, and bled, and Mother Earth, made pregnant by that blood, brought forth new bodies, and gave them, to recall her older offspring, the forms of men” (1.155-160). Now what might be running throught the heads of the readers is this has nothing to do with the power of the gods, but it completely does. This sentence is completely ironic because someone, JOVE, tried to kill a ton of people, but more just came right back up to fight him. While reading this, we feel as though Jove has so much power because we are he is succumbing so many people. Although it is ironic, the author is still trying to tell us that Jove has power because he is able to kill, get the most powerful lady on the Earth pregnant, and kill again. Although the sentence is confusing, if you think about it the irony just proves the gods are the best from the start to the very last word of the sentence. Roman gods are incredibly strong and cause confusing situations, but they usually have the power all