In books II and III of Republic, Plato[1] supports the censorship of stories and tales for the young people of their imaginative utopian city, and in particular for the young people of the "ruling" class called Guardians. He states that censoring certain stories, particularly those with violent themes or notions of change and transformation, would prevent the young guardians from having their minds corrupted by vice, and thus rendered unfit to rule the utopian city. In some respects Plato is right, in others he is wrong. By examining the story of Odysseus killing the suitors in Homer's Odyssey and recognizing whether certain elements of the tale would be harmful or helpful to an aspiring ruler, we will see what exactly Plato was right and wrong in asserting. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In the Odyssey, Homer's epic poem, the main character Odysseus returns home from Troy to find his wife courted by a group of wealthy suitors, to obtain through marriage Odysseus' wealth and land which he owned as king of Ithaca. In a rage, Odysseus kills the group of suitors in bloody and gruesome detail. “Those with the cunning Odysseus, master of cunning, again began to hurl their sharp-tipped spears at the crowd of suitors. Then Eurydamas was killed by Ulysses, a city plunderer, and Amphimedon by Telemachus; the swineherd's spear also killed Polybus; then Ctesippus was killed by the cowherd, shot in the chest”. This is the kind of detail that Plato argues should be censored by the young man and the Guardians. In this respect, Plato is right, as there is no advantage in writing the gruesome tale of Odysseus's killing of the suitors. Odysseus is seen as a hero and role model in the Odyssey, and his actions in this story would reflect on the minds of the young as noble and heroic to emulate. This type of violence is not what you want to happen in the utopian city, much less perpetrated by the city's rulers. The only possible benefit of telling this story is that it would reveal the truth of the world and its harshness to young guardians at an early age; however, this lesson can be taught by a multitude of other tales with much less violent detail. In this interpretation of the story, Plato is right that it should be censored. It is important to note that Hellenic people living in Plato's time would have believed in the Odyssey as fiction, intended primarily as entertainment, but also considered essential for teaching important life lessons and for understanding and identifying with Hellenic culture. This is important in making this distinction, because it allows us to discuss how the same story, which we just concluded is in no way beneficial, is beneficial to the minds of a young person in the utopian city. This is the benefit that the Hellenics would have recognized as the life lesson provided by the fictional Odyssey. Because the Hellenics recognized the epic poem as fiction (after all, it was a poem), they knew that the events that occurred in the Odyssey were not accurate reflections of real life. In this, narrators could easily tell the story of a violent act, but then immediately explain how the act was not meant to be emulated in a literal sense, claiming that the perpetrator intended to instill emotion and/or virtuous ideology through extreme detail. In the Odyssey, narrators might indeed explain Odysseus' violent acts as metaphors for, for example, protecting family, honor, and providing justice to the unjust, among other ideals. The violent acts, in fact, were not to be interpreted as.