Response Paper: Aeneid, Books VII-VIII, X, and XII
Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:
What role do women in Book VII play in the story? Is their role
consistent with the role that women have played in the Aeneid up to this
point? What motivates them? What are their values? Do you
sympathize with them? Does Virgil want you to sympathize with them?
What do we learn about Virgil's Roman values from the story of Pallas in
Books VIII and X? What motivates Pallas and his father, King
Evander? What do they value? Do you sympathize with and admire
them? Does Virgil want you to sympathize with and admire them? How
do Pallas and his father fit the basic values that we have discussed so far in
the Aeneid?
What do you think of Turnus? Is he a worthy adversary for
Aeneas? Are we meant to dislike and condemn him? Is he sympathetic
at all? What motivates him? What are his values? Are his
values fundamentally different from those of Aeneas? If so, how? If
not, what do you make of the fact that his values aren't fundamentally
different? In the end, what makes Turnus the villain and Aeneas the hero
of the Aeneid?