Other Minor Characters In Odysseus In The Odyssey

Whilst Odysseus is the eponym of the poem, other individual MORTAL characters contribute significantly to the poem. Discuss with reference to 1 or 2 minor characters.

Odysseus is the hero of Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, but this champion would not have made his nostos if it were not for the minor characters; for without these minor characters, the story would not be whole. Eumaeus is a man worthy of note, for it was his unending hospitality (or xenia) and unending, pure love for Odysseus and his family, that had allowed Odysseus to finally reunite with his stranger son, his love, Penelope, and exact revenge on the arrogant suitors who have occupied his palace for too many years. The wife of the epic hero is not to be discarded either, for

Penelope, although she is a woman and is seen as a lesser being or object because of this fact, is an intelligent and shrewd. As a woman, her role in the household would have been to look over the female servants and assist it eh weaving of the cloth used in the household. She lulls the suitors into a false sense of security, ‘” My lords, my Suitors, now that noble Odysseus is dead, retrain your ardour, do not urge on this marriage till I have done this work, so that the threads I have spun may not altogether wasted”’ (Pg. 17) promising that after the shroud is finalised that she would choose a suitor to marry, however, she never had any intention of completing such a shroud. The wise queen would work tirelessly on this for hours daily, but under the cover of the night, the threads that she had weaved were undone. At the end of the epic, her cunning shows its head once again. She devises a plot to end the suitor’s advances: ‘. . . Whoever strings the bow most easily and shoots an arrow through every one of these twelve axes, with that man I will go…’ (Pg. 278) with complete knowledge that her husband has been the only one known to achieve such a heroic act. She waits with an enduring heart for a husband that may never come