Analysis Of Homer 's ' The Odyssey '

Homer’s Odyssey is an epic tale set in the world of ancient Greece - a world dominated by men. Admirable men such as Odysseus, the story’s protagonist, are strong, cunning, and wise; they have control over their lives and the people within them. In The Odyssey, the quintessential man is characterized by his authority, including control of the women who surround him. As is suggested throughout the novel, the patriarchal world would fall into disarray without the force of intrinsic male authority. Odysseus’s struggles with his wife, his son’s search for manhood, and the wiles of cunning women like Clytemnestra and Calypso highlight the disordering powers of women. These disordering powers justify, to the men within this world, the necessity

In the “Odyssey”, Odysseus goes through obstacles throughout the book that a normal man couldn’t subside. One example is in book 9, his main obstacle that he is trying to face is to escape from being held hostage in a cave by a Cyclops better known as Polyphemus. Odysseus is a archetypal hero, he is also a role model, with an ambition to get to his homeland Ithaca. He goes through resisting temptation and using his intellect and physical strength to get him there, no matter the obstacle nor the negative flaws that he faces. Odysseus put himself and his men in that situation by being curious and wanting to know what kind of land his ship and the winds led him to. This was selfish of him because it cost him some of his men, but a leader and hero has to play that role and some lives will be dealt with on the way. Odysseus says, “The rest of you will stay here while I go with my ship and crew on reconnaissance. I want to find out what those men are like, Wild savages with no sense of right or wrong Or hospitable folk who fear the gods” (Homer 429). Saying this quote alone makes Odysseus a humble man due to the fact that not even a piece of land is going to slow him down on his journey back home.

The Odyssey is remembered as an epic that stood the test of time. Consisting of Odysseus’s heroic tales his adventure back from the Trojan War, it not only conveys his journey, but also shares the wounds of Odysseus and his recovery physically and emotionally. However, Homer’s depiction of the patriarchy and it’s double standards through the actions of male and female characters is often overlooked. The Odyssey’s female characters try to acquire power in different ways, but ultimately face the same fate of being overpowered by a man, communicating Homer’s moral that women are less valuable and are less able to acquire and retain power then men.

It is an unspoken truth in Homer’s Odyssey that “home“ is something good. All that Odysseus seems to want throughout the poem is to come home again, but that is one thing he is not granted from the god Poseidon for nearly ten years time. On the first page of the Odyssey we learn that all his friends-in-arms had the fortune of returning home “while he alone still hungered for home and wife.“ (The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald; Book I, line 21-22). The original intention of this paper was to ask the question: What is home? What is it that Odysseus yearns for so long? But reading through the Odyssey again, it came to mind, that this question might go beyond the constraints of this essay, considering that Homer describes not just Odysseus’ home, but also shows the reader (or listener) glimpses of the homes of Meneláos, Nestor and Alkínoös. Throughout the Odyssey one of the most central themes of this poem is the topic of “homecoming“ illustrated through the struggle of Odysseus to get home again. Odysseus desire for his home is so overwhelmingly strong “that he longs to die“ just for the sight of seeing “the hearth smoke leaping upward from his own island“ (I., l. 78-80). And yet after years and years, after his long and troublesome passage home “trials and danger, even so, attended him even in Ithaka, near those he loves“ (I., l. 26-30). This hints right at the beginning of the Odyssey at something essential in it: even after a voyage full of

As Odysseus travels from one Greek city to the next, the native citizens inquire about his identity and family. Although Odysseus has not seen his native land in twenty years, he defines himself as the product of family: either the son of Laertes or the father of Telemachus. Odysseus is treated like family in the foreign lands he visits. Telemachus embarks on an adventure of his own and is accepted by Nestor and Menelaus, especially because his father suffered through the Trojan War along with the two kings. Family is at the heart of decisions, central in society, creates a frame of reference for individual members of society, and is a source of learning. Family, the central theme in The Odyssey, connects individuals, cities, and gods to one another and is a driving force in decisions and emotional reactions.

Throughout life we are faced with many different challenges, and obstacles. Temptation is followed from our instincts, insights, or through the support system that we have built within. Nevertheless, loyalty can idealize as an extremity that extracts our thoughts and mental processes, which can make decisions coincide with ease especially considering who we can count on in times of need. Loyalty, many people may look upon it as actions but in all actuality it is what lies deep down inside of the mind, heart, beliefs, and character of a person. In Homer’s book The Odyssey, there is loyalty present from beginning to end and I would like to express how words imply loyalty on an aspectual basis.

Traditional gender roles unfortunately remain an influential part of society today. In some parts of the world, it is illegal for women to do anything without the permission or sometimes even accompaniment of a male guardian. While it is true that the world has made considerable progress in eliminating gender stereotypes overall, there is much work that has yet to be done, and people must continue to strive for equality in order to eliminate unhealthy relationships like that of Odysseus and Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey. The epic poem explores Odysseus’ unnecessarily long journey home after helping Greece win the Trojan War while his wife Penelope waits for him in Ithaca. The contrast between Penelope’s faithfulness at home and how Odysseus often strays from his path of return, in many cases by being unfaithful to his wife, highlights the traditional expectations set for men and women during this time and how differently they are supposed to behave.

It is evident that in Homer’s The Odyssey, the role of women consists of relegation to subservient roles. Women are considered mere objects to be taken during times of war and married off at the will of those within the community. However, Homer presents a way to remedy this inequality through the use of the motifs cunning and intellect. They are used by Clytemnestra, Penelope, and Nausicaa. These women utilize their guile and intelligence in order to transcend the patriarchy and play important roles within their homes and societies, thus giving them more power than women were expected to have.

While there are many scenes in the Odyssey which fall under the category of “moments of recognition” there seems to be a general structure to each scene. At first Odysseus tests the person’s loyalty by listening to them and determining whether they hold sympathetic views towards the suitors and whether they wanted him to return to his home. The next phase is a phase of deception in which Odysseus tells a tale to hide his true identity. This is followed by a scene of him foretelling the future which holds that Odysseus will in fact come back sometime in the future. The final section then is obviously the final recognition in which Odysseus revels his true identity to the people he encounters.

In Homer’s The Odyssey, men acquire all the power, and women live only as aides to men; however, women assert their dominance over men in many occasions where they actually strip men of their dominance. At the end of Book 21, the main character, Odysseus, strings his bow, and shoots it through the row of axes winning Penelope’s competition. By doing this, Odysseus asserts his dominance which he has not had in many years because women stripped him of it.

Penelope is identified by relatively few epithets within the last six books of the Odyssey, and indeed, throughout the poem. Her most common epithet is ‘circumspect,’ although she is also referred to as the ‘respected wife of Odysseus’ and the ‘daughter of Ikarios’ with relative frequency as well. It is not until the end of the poem, specifically Book Twenty-Four, that Penelope gains a broader spectrum of identifying epithets, including ‘blameless’ and ‘prudent’ (Homer, Odyssey 24.194, 198). Her identification as ‘circumspect’ is important to the overall theme of νόστος (homecoming) in the Odyssey. In addition, the manner in which she is described within the poem stays relatively stable until the last two books, wherein Penelope gains greater depth as a female character when she is reunited with her husband.

Throughout the existence of man, individuals spend majority of their life trying to find themselves. This journey is the journey in which they hope they will be able to discover who they truly are and in turn find their identity. One cannot say that they created their own identity because an identity is not simply how we define ourselves but also how others view us. Identity is defined as distinguishing characteristics of an individual, this being said we do not distinguish ourselves from others that is the jobs of outside entities at times. If we really simply on our own definition of self we create an illusion of the individual we want to be but not whom we truly encompass. This is where recognition plays a role. Recognition of oneself by others helps solidify the identity that we have built in our own mind for ourselves. We discover who we are through interactions and how we respond to different stimuli, what are likes are, what are dislikes are, whom we identify ourselves as being similar to. This is exemplified marvelously in Homer’s epic The Odyssey; Homer effectively uses Telemachus the son of the central character to Odysseus as a means to show the journey in which one embarks on to discover who they truly are. This voyage is a pivotal point in the transition from adolescent to an adult.

There are many ways an individual may view The Odyssey with a myriad of variations of the same view. One of these many variations can be the aspect of love and its effects on the characters within Homer’s epic. Love, in Odysseus’ case, governs his will to get back home to his wife, son, and kingdom from his long and tiring journey. During his journey Odysseus undergoes a series of strenuous trials that puts his mental aptitude as well as his physical fortitude to the most extreme test. There are times that Odysseus comes close to being swayed by those around him and those of which he encounters but in the end he fights through it all, as painful as it may be, to get back home to his beloved. Love is a powerful idea that transcends the virtual world of abstraction once it’s being expressed to its fullest extent; that love once exceeding human bounds almost permeates in an awe-inspiring way. One’s devotion to a significant other or interest in another causes them to act in particular ways that if love wasn’t involved they would not have behaved in that way. Due to the strength of love’s effects on people, it can cause a rather sour side effect in the stead of positive outcomes. In the case of Odysseus, as much as he did have love for his kingdom he did not want to go to war. Despite that he had to leave for ten years but this ultimately led him to

The word “Family”, according to Merriam Webster, is thought to be a group of people brought together by common affiliation. The same cannot be said for the culture in the Odyssey by Homer. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is trying to get back home from fighting in the Trojan War. He has been away from home for almost 20 years longing to just be reunited with his kinfolk. Along the way, he comes across many obstacles that hinders him from reaching his home and family in in Ithaca. Luckily, the memories of his wife, Penelope and his son, Telemachus, brings him to the realization that he has to return to his homeland. Family in this epic holds a much higher level of prestige and is not taken lightly. This can be found in many families in the odyssey. For example, there is Achilles who, while conversing with Odysseus in the underworld, asks about his child and how his family is doing. There is also Menelaus who just wants to do right by his children, but the most impressive example of a family tie is the connection between Odysseus, Telemachus, and Penelope in this story. In the Odyssey by Homer, translated by Stanley Lombardo, Family plays an extremely important role in the lives if Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus.

It is an unspoken truth in Homer’s Odyssey that “home“ is something good. All that Odysseus seems to want throughout the poem is to come home again, but that is one thing he is not granted from the god Poseidon for nearly ten years time. On the first page of the Odyssey we learn that all his friends-in-arms had the fortune of returning home “while he alone still hungered for home and wife.“ (The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald; Book I, line 21-22). The original intention of this paper was to ask the question: What is home? What is it that Odysseus yearns for so long? But reading through the Odyssey again, it came to mind, that this question might go beyond the constraints of this essay, considering that Homer describes not just Odysseus’ home, but also shows the reader (or listener) glimpses of the homes of Meneláos, Nestor and Alkínoös. Throughout the Odyssey one of the most central themes of this poem is the topic of “homecoming“ illustrated through the struggle of Odysseus to get home again. Odysseus desire for his home is so overwhelmingly strong “that he longs to die“ just for the sight of seeing “the hearth smoke leaping upward from his own island“ (I., l. 78-80).