Courageous Vision to Decisive Action

Truthful identification as a method to create positive change

Abstract

It is having the courage to look that enables decisive movement, or power, defined as “the ability to do or act.” This ability to look is critically related to an ability to truthfully identify oneself, others, and the problems in one's societal context. This identification process is what empowers characters to act decisively. In Dante’s epic poem Inferno, powerlessness, or the inability to do or act, is even associated with hell. The character Dante is able to continuously move forward, through the static hell, due to the guidance and encouragement from the figure Virgil. Characters from Wolf’s 1983 novel Cassandra and the Homeric epic The Iliad are similarly faced with opportunities to begin seeing, identifying and therefore moving out of their static positions through decisive action. Most notably, an empathetic approach to seeing and identification is a powerful way of moving forward. This paper uses the guiding Virgilian framework from Inferno to consider empowering and disempowering interactions in Cassandra and The Iliad.