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Odyssey Essay : The Expects Of Greed In The Odyssey

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One flaw that existed in ancient greek times and still exists today is greed. One can see acts of greed by the suitors when Telemachus is talking to Athena he says “All the nobles who rule the islands round about, Dulichion, and Same, and wooded Zacynthus too, and all who lord it in rocky Ithaca as well— down to the last man they court my mother, they lay waste my house! And mother … she neither rejects a marriage she despises nor can she bear to bring the courting to an end— while they continue to bleed my household white. Soon—you wait—they’ll grind me down as well”(1.286-294). Greed is shown by the described behavior of the suitors, they take as much from odysseus's household as they want however they contribute very little. Their acts of greed are unacceptable especially when it is considered that the suitors contributed very little or nothing to the household. Another example of greed in the Odyssey is when is when Odysseus's crew mistakes a bag of wind for plunder and opens it hoping to steal some gold. One man said “Look at our captain’s luck—so loved by the world, so prized at every landfall, every port of call. Heaps of lovely plunder he hauls home from Troy, while we who went through slogging just as hard, we go home empty-handed”(10.idk the line number). Then the shipmates opened the bag expecting to find gold, silver, and plunder but instead they found squalls that whipped them back out to sea. Odysseus and his crew were so close to home when acts of jealousy

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