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How Does Haus Get Home In The Odyssey

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A journey home can be as simple as a walk across the street, or what might seem like a lifetime of traveling. Although some come across challenges and obstacles, they find a way to get around it and continue to make their journey home. Odysseus, the main protagonist in the epic poem, The Odyssey, written by Homer, spends twenty years trying to get home. During his journey home he faces many challenges such as, The Lotus Eaters, The Cyclops, The Land of the Dead, The Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and finally The Cattle of the Sun God. At each stop Odysseus and his men have to fight off hideous beasts, resist unworldly temptations, and do their best to survive. In Homer’s work The Odyssey, Odysseus returns home of loyalty to his family and in …show more content…

At one point during his journey he speaks to Circe, a sorcerer goddess. She informs Odysseus to travel down to the underworld, The Land of the Dead, to speak to the blind prophet Tiresias. Once in the underworld Odysseus hears about how Suitors have overran his home and plan to kill his son, Telemachus. Whilst making his way home, Odysseus becomes prisoner on Calypso’s island and stays there for 7 years before Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war intervenes. Before Odysseus is told that he is able to leave he is seen, “[sitting] on the rocky shore and broke his own heart groaning, with eyes wet scanning the bare horizon of the sea” (Homer 84-86). The pain Odysseus feels being away from home for so long is unbearable to him. The only thing on his mind is his memories of home causing him to fall into a depression. Odysseus is filled with anxiety and fear knowing that the suitors have overran his house and constantly ask for his wife’s hand in marriage, but he is stuck, helpless, on Calypso’s island. When the author describes how he is “scanning the bare horizon of the sea”, it symbolizes how Odysseus is constantly looking for a way back home. After some time Odysseus makes his way to Ithaca and he is disguised as a beggar. Once in Ithaca he comes across his son, Telemachus, who doesn’t recognize Odysseus. After Odysseus reveals himself Telemachus is overwhelmed with joy and, “[then], throwing his arms around this marvel …show more content…

When Odysseus returns home, still hiding as a beggar, and sees the different Suitors in his house, although they don’t know that he is Odysseus. Their first reaction is to make fun of him for being old and poor, which is against the Greek values. After the ringleader of the Suitors, Antinous breaks a chair on Odysseus’s back, Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, steps in and pulls him aside. She wants to bring him up to her bedroom and talk to him about his travels, hoping that this beggar knew Odysseus. Penelope describes how her life has been melancholic without Odysseus and says, “If he were to return, if he were to care for me, I might be happily renowned! But grief heaven sent me—years of pain” Homer (1310-1313). Penelope, not knowing that this is Odysseus, describes how her life has been ruined ever since he left. Since she asks this beggar if he knew Odysseus she still has hope for him to return, even after twenty years. Her loyalty towards him demonstrates how that not only Odysseus, but Penelope too, wants to rebuild the relationship that was lost over the years of being apart. Eventually when Odysseus finishes talking to Penelope, she sets up a challenge to determine her husband. The challenge is, the first person to string Odysseus’s bow and shoot and arrow through twelve ax handle sockets will be her husband. The suitors try

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