Themes in Metamorphoses
Dear students you can quote this passage when you will analyse the themes of competition, revenge between mortals like Arachne and gods and goddesses like Minerva: Why, one is tempted to ask, would a mortal be so foolish as to challenge a god? Even if the mortal won she or he could be certain of being punished. In depicting these irrational displays of hubris, Ovid captures human stubbornness and perserverence. The skilled, the wise and the loving among humanity don't accept the inferior status that gods demand of them, even though such resistence inevitably ends badly for the mortal. Thus Ovid's mortal challengers win the reader's sympathy to some extent -- even against the hopeless odds of their own mortality, they strive to best the gods. And in this light, the gods' lack of justice renders them quite tyrannical. Arachne, for instance, is in fact likely a better weaver than Athena. Her audacious talent, coupled with her subject, which decries the immorality of...