The Writings of Epicurus Literary Elements

Philosophical writings, essays, letters

The described action takes place in the present time but there is no clearly defined place where the action takes place.

All the writings are told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.

The tone and mood are hopeful and positive.

In every writing, the protagonists are those who are in a constant search for the truth while the antagonists are those who oppose knowledge and argue for blindly following the authorities.

The major conflict in the writings is between what is known and the unknowns which waits to be discovered.

“On Atoms and the Void” reaches its climax when the author concludes that everything in the world is composed out of atoms and that the empty space between the atmos is called a void.

In almost every writing the author writes about the way in which the human body is inferior to almost everything around it. This foreshadows the way in which the human body will often be ignored in favor of everything else.

At the beginning of the essay “Essay on Seeing” the narrator claims that the head is the place where rationality starts. This idea changes and is made an understatement towards the end when the narrator changes his opinion and claims that the chest is the place where the mind resides.

One of the main allusions which can be found in many of the essays is that mankind should not focus all their attention on making their Gods happy but should rather push all their efforts into making sure their intelligence is cultivated and nourished.

A harsh image is painted by the narrator of those who are egoistic. According to the narrator, those people are the worse in society because they do nothing to advance the common knowledge. They also chose to keep everything from themselves and behave in antisocial manners, behaviors which are not beneficial in the long run.

A paradoxical idea presented in some of the essays is the idea that even though the Gods do not get involved in the lives of normal humans, they should still be feared and respected.

N/A

The term “main heads” is used in “Letters to Herodotus” as a general term to make reference to those who possess an extreme amount of intelligence and are able to understand even the most complicated teachings without the need to see them simplified.

We have a personification in the sentence “And the skies opened up and gave us wisdom”.