Telemakhos
Every boy would like to be characterized as a man. Most look to age or the way they see their own maturity to determine manhood for themselves. Neither age nor self-image can determine whether or not you have become a man. In that time, arete would be used to determine one’s manhood. Early in the Odyssey, we see Telemakhos daydreaming as an untrained boy. The book says, "...-for he, too, was sitting there, unhappy among the suitors, a boy, daydreaming"(277). He is no comparison to Odysseus as a leader or fighter. As the book goes on, we see Telemakhos become more and more like his father. By the end of the fight with the suitors we see him now matured from the youth we saw into the man he should be.
Telemakhos tries to be like his father to the best of his ability, even though his father has been away since he was merely an infant. The only father he knew was from stories told by people, including his mother. He also dreamed constantly of the man his father must have been, thinking, "What if his great father came from the unknown world and drove these men like dead leaves through the place, recovering honor and lordship in his own domains"(277). It is as if Odysseus did raise his son in some ways, through the dreams and stories, perhaps being a better figure to look up to rather than in person. In the dreams and stories, you can be built up to be more than you really are. In person, you can see how flawed the person really is, which may lower your opinions and ideals. But still, one would not want to sacrifice that for the intimate father and son love and memories that would have been attained during childhood. The better father would be the one that was always there.
By traveling far from home and risking his life to learn about his father, Telemakhos is forced to mature at a tremendous rate. He learns more from his trip than he could have by staying at home with the suitors. From Nestor and Menelaos he learns courage, bravery, and how to be both a man and a host. He learns that he must fight against what the suitors represent, to stop them from claiming what is his.
At the beginning of the book Telemakhos is troubled with the suitors trying to marry his mother. He tries to keep them in line but they are rampant, especially when they're drunk. They kill Odysseus's herd for their own feedings and disrespect the house of Odysseus. So Telemakhos is obliged to search for his father because he is his last and only hope of keeping the suitors away. He is determined to search for his father and must find him at all costs. When Odysseus is stuck on the island of Kalypso, Athena had obliged him to leave the island in search of his home, Ithaka. She tells him of the memories he had there and he remembered how much he had longed for Ithaka. So he was determined to get home. Just like how Telemakhos was determined to find his father. They were destined by the gods to come together. In book 16, it talks about Telemakhos and his father talking to each other planning how they were going to take over the suitors. They talked and talked and were happy to see each other.
In Odyssey, Homer creates a parallel between Odysseus and Telemachos, father and son. The two are compared in the poem from every aspect. One parallel was the quest of Telemachos, in correlation with the journey of his father. In this, Odysseus is developed from a childish, passive, and untested boy, to a young man preparing to stand by his father's side. This is directly connected to the voyage of Odysseus, in that they both lead to the same finale, and are both stepping-stones towards wisdom, manhood, and scholarship.
At some point in their life, many people experience feelings of inadequacy or uncertainty. In “The Odyssey” by Homer, one of the main characters Telemachus experiences both of these feelings. He feels that he is not good enough, especially compared to his father, Odysseus, who many people refer to as a great leader. In the beginning of “The Odyssey”, Telemachus’ home has been taken over by suitors, each with the goal of winning over his mother, in hopes to marry her and become king. Telemachus is not fond of these men in his home, but does not have the confidence to get rid of them. Lastly, at this point in the story, Odysseus, Telemachus’ father, has been gone for approximately twenty years, most of Telemachus’ life. Telemachus has been
Throughout novel, The Odyssey by Homer, Telemachus, son of the main character, Odysseus, goes through significant phases that changes his life forever. Right from the beginning, Telemachus was in a situation that he couldn't rid himself out of. He was basically a depressed boy with a “heart obsessed with grief”(Homer 81) who couldn't man up because of having a missing father or any men to look up to, and also having to face the worst guests, men trying to take his mother, throw him away, make him feel weak, and take over the palace. “'He's left me tears and grief. Nor do I rack my heart and grieve for him alone. No Longer. Now the gods have invented other miseries to plague me'” (Homer 85).
Telemachus demonstrates his new maturity when he explains his plan if he discovers his father is dead. “I can come back to my own dear country/ and raise a mound for him, and burn his gear,/ with all the funeral honors that benefit him,/ and give my mother a husband”(2.231-234). Telemachus changes because of the responsibility that he is taking on and the mature decision that he is prepared to make. Telemachus also exemplifies this step into manhood when he acknowledges that he must find a way to overcome his obstacle of the suitors. He takes on the quest to find his father, which is important to him. If he fails to fulfill his responsibility to his mother, he has to face the consequences of losing her to one of the suitors. Telemachus maturely discusses his request of the suitors’ departure with the main suitor. “After the death of King Odysseus./All I insist on is that I rule over our house/ and rule the slaves that my father won for me”(1.447-449). Telemachus is calmly asks if he can take responsibility for the house if his father is dead. His ability to discuss his problems instead of resorting to immediate violence indicates he is changing. His readiness and persistence after he is denied is
The Odyssey is a tale that has changed literature and storytelling. In this tale Odysseus is a Soldier from the battle of Troy trying to get home to his island of Ithaca, where he is king. His wife and son must wait ten years while he is trying to make his way home. In Odysseus’s absence wooer’s, or better known as suitors, learn of his absence and travel to Ithaca to win his wife’s hand in marriage. These men come every day feasting on Odysseus’s food and wine, and give his servant’s orders. His son Telemachus, does his best to keep the suitors from ruining his fathers house but he is only a boy, and doesn’t receive the respect of an adult. Telemachus then has a visit from the god Athena, whom Odysseus is friends with, who advises him to travel to find out about his father. In his travels he hears that Odysseus may still be alive. Meanwhile Odysseus goes through a series of adventures and hardships that prove his wisdom. It is interesting in contrast of the Iliad, even though Achilles was much stronger and a better warrior, Odysseus was portrayed as a greater hero due to his wisdom. He uses this wisdom to escape from the Cyclops.
Telemachus has many experiences on his journey to manhood. In Ithaca while Odysseus is gone Penelope is being plagued with suitors asking for her hand in marriage. Telemachus sees what a nuisance they are to his mother, and how much they are taking from his father’s palace. He wants to put a stop to this and comes to the conclusion that he must find his father, or at least some information
The relationship between Odysseus and Telemakhos is a blind love. That is because they never really got to know each other because Odysseus has been gone for most of Telemakhos’ life. One example of this blind love is when Odysseus hears about how the suitors are mistreating and stealing from Telemakhos. Odysseus gets so irate that he was then even more determined than ever, to return to his family. Telemakhos also exhibits the same kind of blind love towards his father. Even though people have told him that his father was dead, he never believed it. He felt that his father was alive and was willing to sacrifice his life to prove it. Telemakhos was inexperienced at directing a boat, but he was willing to try because he felt something inside of him that gave him the strength to go on. Thus, this relationship between Odysseus and Telemakhos gave both of them the courage to overcome the hardships ahead of them.
...machus, through this journey, has become a man. When the story began Telemachus was a little boy with no figure in his life to really guide him stuck in a bad situation. Over the course of the journey Telemachus had to make due in many situations where respected elders surrounded him. In normal father to son relationships it is your father who teaches you and forces you to become a man. Somehow in this story, although Odysseus was not directly in Telemachus’ life, Odysseus did teach Telemachus how to be a man. It was Odysseus’ absence and hope of his return that was the driving force for Telemachus, and which made him eventually grow into manhood.
As Telemakhos, who is ignorant of how real family life should be, travels in search of his father, he learns about family life. In Pylos, he meets Nestor, who asks his son, Peisistratus, to accompany him. This is important because it is the first time Telemakhos has a real friend. In Sparta, he meets King Menelaos and Helen, who are in the midst of the celebration of a double wedding. Here he is shown what a real family should be. Menelaos and Helen have had their troubles. But since they were reunited after the Trojan War, their lives together have been happy and their relationship is loving, honest, and healthy. By the same token, their kingdom thrives, because of this healthy family relationship.
Telemachus’ and his father Odysseus’ experiences/journeys parallel each other in many different ways. One way that they are both similar is that they are both very well liked by Athena, who accompanies both on their journeys around Greece. Athena acts as guardian to both father and son. A quote which proves this is I, 85 “In the meantime I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Odysseus' son Telemachus; I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also condu...
In the first four books of Homer’s The Odyssey, the character of Telemachus undergoes a dramatic evolution. When Homer first introduces him, he appears to be an unsophisticated youth, wallowing in self-pity. After the goddess Athena intervenes, he becomes, seemingly, a man of courage, strength, and resolve. On closer analysis, however, one remains to wonder if this transformation is genuine. The rapidity of his change in personality and the assistance he requires from the goddess at every stage in his journey suggests that he is not yet a hero in the mold of his father, the great Odysseus.
Throughout the last books of The Odyssey Homer tells us how Odysseus restores his relationships with his friends and relatives at Ithaca. Perhaps one of the most revealing of these restoration episodes is Odysseus' re-encounter with his son, Telemachus. This re-encounter serves three main purposes. First, it serves to portray Telemachus' likeness to his father in the virtues of prudence, humility, patience, and planning. Secondly, it is Odysseus' chance to teach his son to be as great a ruler as Odysseus himself is. Lastly, Homer uses this re-encounter to emphasize the importance of a family structure to a society. To be able to understand the impact that this meeting had on Odysseus it is necessary to see that Telemachus has grown since his first appearances in the poem and obviously since his last contact with his father; Odysseus left Telemachus as an infant now their relationship is a man to man relationship rather than a man to child relationship.
In the Odyssey, Telemachus, son of great hero Odysseus, who grows up in the world of greed and disrespect where the suitors take over his palace and court his mother, is one of the most significant character throughout the whole epic. His father, Odysseus, leaving the land Ithaca for 20 years, is the only warrior alive in Trojan war who hasn’t make his return home. During Telemachus’ expedition to search for the news of his father, he is under a process of maturation from the beginning in which he is mere a shadow of his father to the end in which he becomes more and more like him in terms of initiative, sensitivity and socialization.
While Odysseus and his son are united and face the world together, Ulysses sees himself and his son as two different people living separate lives. When he returns, Odysseus has a close, personal relationship with his son; he becomes Telemachus' mentor. Odysseus realizes Telemachus' resemblance to himself - both are noble men of action who value justice. Together, they devise a plan to avenge the arrogant suitors who have abused their household for the past three years. Finally, "he [Odysseus] found the whole company lying in heaps in the blood and dust..." (Homer, 22.383). Father and son are victorious together. Conversely, as Ulysses ages, he and his son are disunited. Ulysses is confident that he has trained his son to be a benevolent ruler. He praises Telemachus's patience, gentleness, and prudence - all outstanding qualities that he is lacking. Ulysses acknowledges that he and his son are opposite people. He is adventurous, while Telemachus is sedate. "He works his work, I mine" (Tennyson, Line 43) suggests acceptance of a destiny; the father and son must lead separate lives because of their differences. Despite changing roles the man plays in Telemachus' life, he successfully raises his son to become a respectable leader.