"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."

What was striking to me about the savages described in Jack and the Beanstalk and in Homer’s Cyclopes was the nice things they owned and the fruitful way they lived. In Cyclopes, Homer tells King Alcinous that the Cyclopes live with no law or hierarchy but live simply in caves in the hills. This way of living,however, does not sound so atrocious when the men walk into Polyphemus's cave and find great stock of cheese and lambs (so much that the Cyclopes was running out of room). In Jack and the Beanstalk, the Giant lives like a king atop the stalk. In a huge castle, the Giant eats well with his wife, contains bags of gold in his pockets, a golden harp and a hen that lays golden eggs.
Another tie between the Cyclopes of The Odyssey and the Giant in Jack is that they eat men, or are cannibals if one considers Cyclopes and Giants to share a race with humans. Odysseus finds much horror, as do the other men that the Cyclopes eat two of the soldiers. And Jack's concern of being in the Giants house is amplified when the Giant rhymes of Englishman being turned into bread. Odysseus,however, coming back from brutally murdering the city of Troy cannot be much better then a hungry Cyclopes. And though Jack’s trespassing does seem less severe in the light of making bones in to bread, that does not necessarily make it ethical.
Many people from both the time periods of these stories and modern day would covet the life styles these savages lead. If it is their actions that lead to the label of savage and untamed, are the heroes, who steal and kill fellow man, any more civilized?
These stories were told in there time for amusement. Tbe Odyssey was meant to tell an epic adventure that is patriotic to their country. Jack and the Beanstalk was told as a children story. And in their respective times, these stories would have no questions about morals. Killing at war is of the greater good for the country and stealing when poor can be justified. In retrospect the ideas and morals of the 21st century vastly differ from when these stories were told. To them Odysseus was right in being pompous with the Cyclopes and if Jack was poor he was just in taking the Giants gold.

Eleanor Barba