A Hero's Journey In The Odyssey

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A Hero's Journey Nearly 3,000 years after it was first composed, Homer's The Odyssey remains as one of the most celebrated and widely read poems ever told. Furthermore, it has had a perennial influence on the works of many great poets across the centuries. Both Alfred Tennyson and Constantine P. Cavafy were greatly influenced by Homer's Odyssey. Their poems, "Ulysses" and "Ithaca", were the results of expanding on Homer's epic. The main distinction between the two poems are the protagonists' attitude towards Ithaca. In Ulysses's case, although he is the king of Ithaca, he is unhappy with it and additionally, he longs to leave it behind for the open seas. However, the Ithaca in Cavafy's poem is described by the poet as a destination everyone should look forward to because the journey there is filled with experiences. …show more content…

Ulysses's discontent begins right from the beginning where he mentions that he benefits nothing from staying at home "by this still hearth" with his old wife. (Tennyson 1-3) "I am part of all that I have met" (18) is a great phrase to further reinforce his dissatisfaction. He is trying to imply that he is no longer the same person that he was when he left for Troy many years ago. His countless journeys have molded him to become an entirely different person and this made him feel like he no longer belongs in Ithaca. In W.B. Stanford's book The Ulysses Theme, he examines the poem saying that "This Ulysses follows [a] pointing finger outwards, away from home, into the unknown, not towards Homer's Ithaca." (Stanford 204) He seems to have a persistent longing to travel to unknown

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