Love in the Odyssey There are many essential emotions that form the building blocks of our lives. These emotions help to shape the people that we are. These feelings are emotional necessities to ultimately keep us happy. No piece of literature these feelings more evident than the Odyssey by Homer. Throughout the course of this book there is one major emotional theme: love. Often times in life we search for a companion, someone to share our love and life with. Odysseus and Penelope's lasting relationship is an obvious representation of love in the Odyssey. Although Odysseus is gone for twenty years he never forgets his faithful wife in Ithaca. This love helps him persevere through the many hardships that he encounters on his journey home. Penelope also exemplifies this same kind of love for Odysseus. At home in Ithaca, she stays loyal to Odysseus by unraveling his shroud and delaying her marriage to the suitors that are courting her. She always keeps the hope that her love, Odysseus, will return. Odysseus and Penelope's marriage clearly illustrates the theme of love. The Odyssey also illustrates other relationships where love is of great importance – one of the most emphasized is the father-son relationship between Odysseus and Telemachos. This relationship is a little awkward because they both never really got to know each other but they still care for each other's well being. When Odysseus hears of all the suitors devouring Telemachos's future fortune and mistreating him, he wants to return and revenge the misuse of his family and property. Odysseus, like any parent, also misses his only child while he is at war. Telemachos on the contrary also displays a lot of love for his father. Telemachos leaves Ithaca, nexperienced, to find any knowledge of his father in hope that he is still alive. Telemachos through out most of his life has lacked a father figure and desperately needs that special help and guidance from Odysseus as he becomes a man. Their relationship seems to show how love can give you the strength to carry on. The other important father-son relationship that exhibits love is the one between Odysseus and Laertes. Odysseus, when he returns, wishes to go see his father. When he confronts his father and tries to hide his identity, he is unable to finish his story because of the great sorrow in his father's eyes.
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”:Gabriel Garcia- Marquez story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, written in 1955, is about a family harboring what is thought to be a fallen old “angel man”, initially thought to be on his way to take their ailing child away. The angel must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down (Marquez, 1955). The family not knowing how to treat the situation embarks on a journey of mixed emotions of whether the man is good or evil, strange creature or angel. We will journey down the road of evaluation of the magical realism within this story.
Characters like Telemachus, Menelaus, and Penelope are similar to what they feeling for the people they love and care about. Telemachus situation is that he does not want to accept that his father Odysseus is death. So he goes on a voyage to find out what really happened to his father. As he arrives at Sparta Menelaus finally tells Telemachus that Odysseus is alive and is held captive by Calypso. This gives him hope that his family will finally be complete. Penelope in the other hand is devastated she has been weeping on her bed since the news broke that Odysseus is death. Also, not knowing that his son Telemachus is on a voyage and his life is in danger. Finally, Menelaus who has been wandering the sea for seven years and discovering that the death of his brother and the loss of his friend’s because of the Trojan war and the dangers of voyaging. So, he made himself a favor that is better to stay home and live honorably. The moral of the story in this section is that in the end the people you love will matter the
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One important characteristic that Penelope and Odysseus share is their loyalty to each other. Odysseus failed to return home seven years after the Trojan war. Because he is assumed dead, 108 wealthy noblemen and princes invade his palace and refuse to leave until Penelope has married one of them. By marrying her, the suitors hope to gain control over Odysseus’s wealth and power. However, Penelope remains faithful to Odysseus. But, as a woman, she is powerless to remove the suitors from the palace. And without a man in the household, she is subject to her father’s decisions. However, despite his wish for her to remarry, Penelope clings to the hope of Odysseus’s return and remains faithful to him. She waits and gathers information by asking strangers who arrive in Ithaca about Odysseus. She goes through the stories of their encounter point by point, and asks about every detail while tears stream down her eyes. Although the suitors promise her a secure future, Penelope continues to wait for Odysseus. Without Odysseus, she does not believe that she will ever be happy again.
Despite these works being written over centuries apart, the authors correlation of the concepts of love were notable. Plato’s Symposium was composed of different views regarding their definitions of love, while Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” focuses on what a group of friends talk about on the topic of love. Both pieces contain groups of people discussing their ideologies and relatable experiences, which in the end emphasize the complexity and variety of this emotion. Even though these literary pieces were written over two thousand years apart, similarities could be found within them regarding the concepts of dying for love as well as acknowledging the different forms of love that exist.
While the relationship between Odysseus and Telemakhos is a blind love, the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope is a love between two people who just want to be together. Odysseus shows his love towards Penelope throughout the Odyssey. In spite of the fact that Odysseus has been gone for twenty years, he never forgets his wife back in Ithaca. One example of how much he wanted to go home was when he went to the island of the Lotus-Eaters. He could have stayed on the island of the Lotus-Eaters where everything he ever wanted was there, but the thing he wanted the most was to be with his wife. Penelope likewise displays this kind of love towards Odysseus.
In book eight of Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is on the island of the Phaeacians and is waiting to return home to Ithaca. Meanwhile, Alcinous, the Phaeacian king, has arranged for a feast and celebration of games in honor of Odysseus, who has not yet revealed his true identity. During the feast, a blind bard named Demodocus sings about the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles at Troy. The song causes Odysseus to start weeping, so Alcinous ends the feast and orders the games to begin. During dinner after the games, Odysseus asks Demodocus to sing about the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy. This song too causes Odysseus to break down and cry. Homer uses a dramatic simile to describe the pain and sorrow that Odysseus feels as he recalls the story of Troy.
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.
The relationship between Odysseus and his wife Penelope is one of loyalty, love, and faith. Both characters are driven by these characteristics. Odysseus displays his loyalty in his constant battle to get home to his wife. This love helps him persevere through the many hardships that he encounters on his journey home. Odysseus spent 20 years trying to return to his home in Ithaca after the end of the Trojan War. Along the way he manages to offend both gods and mortals, but through his intelligence, and the guidance of Athena, he manages to finally return home. There he discovers that his home has been overrun by suitors attempting to win Penelope’s hand in marriage. The suitors believed that Odysseus was dead. Odysseus and his son, Telemachus,
If I ask you to picture an angel, what do you see? Is it a vibrant white, majestically dressed individual with lush and strong wings who commands reverence with his presence? What does this ethereal creature stand for? Righteousness? Protector of good and the purest form of a celestial being besides God? If you have read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” then you may have been introduced to a conflicting image of an angel. This angel is in no way similar to the one described above. Actually, we are not even sure he is an angel. What we do know after reading this story is that the creature presented represents the overwhelming need of humans to understand and interpret every facet of their lives. The angel does not fit the general consensus of what an angel is and leaves human expectations unmet. This story embodies the nature of humans to explain, categorize, and label any affair that is not already so.
In conclusion, the “Odyssey” is one of the greatest literary works ever known and this literary analysis should help the reader to understand the important components of the novel such as theme, characters, relationships, symbols, motifs, literary devices, and tone.
Throughout the story The Odyssey there are many themes that represent major parts of the story. The main theme that stood out to me is love which includes loyalty. “Love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person; a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend; or a sexual passion or desire” (dictionary.com). “Loyalty is defined in the Webster's dictionary as faithfulness or devotion to a person, a cause or a duty” (Webster’s dictionary). Through these definitions, it can be expressed that loyalty and love are major themes in Homer's epic, "The Odyssey". Love and loyalty shows relationships that are between two people. The few relationships that represents love and loyalty is between husband and wife Odysseus and Penelope and also between father and son Odysseus and Telemachus. These relationships shows more than just love and loyalty though, their relationships also shows compassion, sympathy and the need to be in each one another’s lives.
The character of Penelope in Homer's Odyssey reflects the faithful wife who waits twenty years for the arrival of her husband. Only a strong woman could sustain the stress, anxiety and confusion resulting from the chaos of a palace with a missing king whose fate is unknown. Her responsibilities and commitments toward the man she loves are particularly difficult to keep, under the strain of the situation. Although she does not actively pursue an effort to find him, her participation in the success of Odysseus' homecoming can be seen in her efforts to defend and protect the heritage, reputation and the House of Odysseus in his absence. As Odysseus withstands his trial, Penelope withstands her trials against temptations to give in to the many anxious suitors, to give up on her faith and respect for her religion, her husband and even her self. Penelope's strength in keeping the highest standards in her function as a wife, woman and mother contributes to the success of Odysseus' homecoming by keeping the home and family for him to come back to.
Holt, J. (2013). Escape from childhood. In J. Noll (Ed.), Taking Sides: clashing views on
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