Odysseus Essay: The Role Of Women In The Odyssey

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In the Odyssey, the experiences Odysseus faced were caused and influenced by a certain amount of woman who some could say controlled his life. Odysseus’ wife Penelope was always the woman in his heart even though he travelled to many different lands and was offered immortality, wealth or amazing sex he turned them all down in hopes of one day returning to his one true love. Through all his troubles he spent in a total of 10 years lost at sea not including the 10 years due to the Trojan War, he spent 7 with the lustrous Calypso, encountered the godlike beauty Nausicaa and spent another year with the bewitching enchantress Circe. The journey of Odysseus even he didn’t know was aided by the help of goddess Athena, daughter of Zeus who guided his …show more content…

Odysseus’ adventure never turns out well with his men because it didn’t seem to occur to them after all they had suffered that maybe Circe was luring the men into a trap. The verdict of how the men of his crew judge good and bad in this poem seems that if the person sings beautifully or offers fine food and drink that they are good. Poor Odysseus, most of his men were fools even maybe he. It is strange that even the second time when one of his men came running down in tears that it is so natural to just walk once again into Circe’s lair and stranger that Odysseus sensed a trap but warmed none of his crew. Another god appears again to help Odysseus, Hermes. After he followed Hermes’s guidance and consumed his magic her and Circe’s magic drink he is then to wait, “The moment Circe strikes with her long thin wand, you draw your sharp sword sheathed at your hip and rush her fast as if to run her through.” Then she was meant to plead to him and swear an oath in which afterwards he would bed her, at what point did this not seem a little hard to believe? After a year after a plea from his men Odysseus finally speaks to Circe asking for him to go home when he is in bed with her, even though one again Odysseus is next to a beautiful woman in bed he asks of home and his wife

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