Odysseus's Revenge

I think that Odysseus' actions were justified because of the actions of the wooers. Without any conformation of him being dead, they first tried to woo his wife. That is very disrespectful and angered Odysseus greatly. Also, the suitors show no respect for his house and belongings. They overtake his house without even thinking about the man of the house, which is disrespectful.

In the story, “The Odyssey,” it is about a man known as Odysseus, he was away from home for 20 years. He was away from home for that long due to being in war, being kidnapped, all of his men and his ships being destroyed. When he does return to Ithaca he finds out that his house is full of men trying to take his wife away from him. After he heard about this he plotted to get them and knowing all this his actions were justified. They were justified because, the wooers are trying to take his wife, they threatened to kill his son, Telemachus, and when he was dressed as a beggar they were rude and unpleasant towards him.

When many people get hurt, emotionally, physically, or even verbally, it triggers chemicals in your brain, and whether or not you want to, it makes you want to get revenge just so that you know the other person can hurt just as much as you did. OR you’re just mean and cruel. It all comes down to whether or not you take your anger, sadness or frustration out in a healthy, kind, and careful way. After Odysseus revealed his identity as a beggar, and began hating on all of those people who were involved in taking his home away, and devising a plan to massacre the suitors and reign control of Ithaca, he automatically just made a situation ten times worse than it had to be. The punishment made were way too severe. There must have been so many people that did not deserve it. What Odysseus did was not justified.

Odysseus had many reason to make revenge on all the wooers who had tried to steal his thrown from him. Not only did they try to steal his throw, but also they disrespected his wife and son on multiple occasions. Although, that did not make any of his actions justified. In a few instances the punishment was too severe, and they did not deserve it.

Odysseus’ journey home was a long difficult venture which resulted in the loss of some of his crew, due to various monsters. Once Odysseus finally returned to his kingdom, he was disguised as a beggar and said that he was a friend of Odysseus. After a few days of witnessing his house be trashed by suitors, he revealed himself to his son, Telemachus, who the suitors planned to kill. Odysseus and Telemachus came up with a plan to kill all of the suitors while at the feast they were planning to hold. Penelope was also planning on holding a competition to figure out which one of the suitors she should marry.

There are many times in The Odyssey where Odysseus’ actions are questionable whether they were justified or unjustified. When Odysseus’ saw the way the suitors were treating the women, how they were stealing Odysseus’ things, and eating all of his food which made him mad. Odysseus’ proceeds to get the cowherder and swineherder to help him and Telemachus to take the suitors down. After Odysseus’ returns his actions towards those in his palace were justified when, especially when he killed Antinous and Melanthius.

The change in Odysseus’ mercifulness towards innocent women accentuates his grasp on self-possession. Before, Odysseus did not show mercy towards anyone, especially women. When his army stormed a town, he himself states, “Plunder we took, and we enslaved the women, to make…equal shares to all” (146). When Odysseus enslaves the women, Homer seems to particularly emphasize the negative quality of mercilessness in him as a raider of cities. Odysseus does not feel any compassion when he enslaves innocent women handing them off to men as if they are objects. Moreover, Odysseus plunders and enslaves without any self-control, which highlights that he is glorifying and enjoying himself. Destroying a city, killing many people, and raping innocent women evidently shows the immense amount of self-possession that Odysseus completely lacks. Later on, Odysseus seems to change his stance on mercy. After he kills every suitor, Odysseus tells Eurykleia, “‘To glory over slain men is no piety…Your part is now to tell me of the women…who dishonored me, and the innocent’” (422). Homer accentuates the change in Odysseus with respect to his mercifulness towards innocent women. Rather than disregarding innocent women, he now differentiates between them and the dishonorable. Furthermore, he himself says that it is impious to glory over murdered men, which reveals the transformation

What kind of human kills for their own good? In the bloody journey of the Odyssey many men were killed by the hands of Odysseus himself. A lot of the men that died were killed by Odysseus but there was a good number of them that were killed by the actions Odysseus made. When it comes down to it Odysseus was wrong for killing the suitors. Odysseus killed the suitors out of his own insecurity, selfishness, and of course out of rage for what was done to him. But what was Odysseus expecting after being gone for 10 years? For everyone to just hold off on their lives just to wait to see if he will be coming back? Odysseus’ actions were not justified.

In the closing passages of the Odyssey, the suitors and disloyal servants are punished for their crimes against Odysseus, and it does indeed seem that the death penalty doled out by Odysseus is harsh. However, at this particular period of Greek history, it was expected that each man take his own vengeance against his trespassers as there was no judicial system in place to deal with these problems at the time, therefore it seems justified that as their crimes stretched over a period of nearly 20 years and were directly against xenia, the law of Zeus, that Odysseus take his revenge as he wishes.

Lizeth Marin Honors Introduction to Literature Period 3 18 April 2008 Odysseus: Hero or Villain? Heading home, to Ithaca, Odysseus is faced upon many obstacles that he and his men try to overcome, but in the end substantiate that Odysseus is a villain. “The old soldier in despair: He has spent ten years (seven of them as Calypso’s not entirely unwillingly captive) trying to get home” (652, summary). Evidence proves that Odysseus is a villain, because he tries to convince that he was kept unwillingly by Calypso. However, it is true that Odysseus was kept as Calypso’s captive for a time. Yet he can still be judged as a villain, because he does not just stay as a prisoner, no, he assists Calypso by being with her for the pleasures that

In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is away from his home, Ithaca, for twenty years. Despite the low odds of Odysseus ever returning home after such a time, those in Ithaca were expected to remain loyal to Odysseus as they awaited his return. While this was a daunting task, those who accomplished it were heavily rewarded, while those who didn’t were met with death. Upon his return, Odysseus promised Eumaeus, the loyal swineherd, that he would find him a wife, grant him property next to his own, and that he would become one of the “comrades to Telemachus, brothers from then on” (21.243). His own wife Penelope remained loyal for all of the twenty years of Odysseus’ absence, never once giving in to the many suitors who invited themselves into her home and spent years vying for her hand. While she probably would have been killed by Odysseus if she had been unfaithful to him, perhaps her greatest reward was just being able to be with her husband again and being able to live. The suitors, however, were not so lucky. Odysseus, along with the help of the goddess Athena, carefully plotted and executed the death of every suitor that entered his home and gone after his wife. With the help of his son, the swineherd, and the goddess, Odysseus took down every suitor, until “the suitors lay in heaps, corpse covering corpse” (22.414). The resulting death of every disloyal character in the epic

When Odysseus returned home to his wife and son, he took a very brutal approach to rid his home of the suitors who had invaded his household.  This revenge was also taken out upon the servants and maids who had been unfaithful to Penelope and had slept with the suitors.  Some may say this punishment was too harsh, and made Odysseus less than an honorable man.  However, Odysseus’s actions were justifiable.

Near the end of this chapter when he has finished off all of the suitors, (mostly with the aid of Athena), Odysseus feels he has prevailed as the winner, righted the wrong. At one point he exclaims "these men the doom of the gods has brought low, and their own indecent acts. They'd no regard for any man who chanced come their way. And so thanks to their reckless work, they met their shameful fate."(435-438). The irony of this quote is the fact that he is

In each story that has been created, there has always been the main protagonist of the story, in this case, the hero. The hero of the story would be placed through trials and tribulations towards the victory that they desire. In the Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus returns home after battling in the Trojan War for ten years, losing all of his men in brutal ways, and coming home to see 108 men; the suitors, in his house, eating his food, sleeping in his house, and harassing his family: Penelope and Telemachus. After winning the challenge for Penelope’s hand in marriage and winning the kingdom, Odysseus and his allies murder all of the suitors but two of them. Before engaging the suitors, one of his nurses, the one that helped raised him as a child, informs Odysseus that twelve of the fifty other woman in the castle betrayed him by developing relationships with the suitors. Knowing this information; after murdering the suitors, Odysseus forces the twelve woman to clean up the blood and corpses of their lovers. After cleaning up the remains of the men, the woman are hung for committing relations with the men. Odysseus was treated horribly by a Melanthius, the man who taunted

Not only the suitor treat her as an object but her son as well. He feels she does not know what she doing or lack of knowledge about how to run the kingdom. Odysseus still treat her as a innocent child and know she could not harm the maids.