Sehun Bolaji
Annotated Bibliography
The Story of Echo and Narcissus From The Book Of Ovid “Metamorphoses”
In the story of Echo and Narcissus, Narcissus was considered a very handsome man who everyone fell in love at first sight , but he was very narcissistic so he never returned the affection he received towards others. He literally carries around a spear to keep the girls away. A nymph that goes by the name of Echo( who got cursed to only repeat a person’s last words by Hera/Juno) fell in love with him and began to stalk him. One day, he came across a lake to drink some water from after a hike and then he fell in love with his own reflection and stayed and admired himself until he eventually starved himself to death and died. The theme of this story is to beware of the trap of self-absorption. Sure there’s no problem with loving yourself but you shouldn’t love and adore yourself to the point where you refuse to give others the time of day. Furthermore, learn to take rejection because it’s a part of life. The target audience of this piece would be anyone looking for love around the globe. You can’t expect to find love if you refuse to give anyone the time of day, Furthermore, if your stuck on one person who wouldn’t show the same affection you show them. There are “other fish in the sea” so you shouldn’t let one person discourage you, you shouldn’t let someone have a negative effect on your self-esteem. The tone of this story is cautionary. The author is trying to tell us to beware of our own narcissistic behavior for it could be our downfall. The Rhetorical Appeal of this story is pathos, as most Greek mythology stories are. They try to persuade the reader using emotion. The author made the readers feel bad for both echo and narcissus by the unfortunate way they died.
Work Cited
http://www.auburn.edu/allynbaconanthology/documents/EchoNarcissus.pdf
https://www.classics.uga.edu/sites/default/files/guanci_Final%20Draft%20Teaching%20Project_0.pdf
