...Patriarchy plays a major role in The Odyssey and victimizes several characters. The ancient Greek epic poem, by Homer, is about the journey of the Greek hero Odysseus to his homeland of Ithaca. During his 20-year struggle to return back home, he encounters many obstacles, including Poseidon who creates a deadly sea storm to punish Odysseus, women who hold him captive for a chance to win his love, and man-eating giants who kill many of his men. Despite all of these unfortunate events, he manages to make it back home to reunite with Penelope and the rest of his...
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...Philosophies (Women)- Women play either a motherly role or that of a seductress. They are weakened along with being lost without a guide and a support. An example would be Penelope, wife of Odysseus since she is a mother, but while Odysseus is gone, and when suitors come along, in a way she tempts them in terms of power (of the role of king) and as a woman, but she actually never gives in to any of the men. The purpose of women was mainly to lament the losses for their men and also persuading for their safety. Criticism- Homer had written the Odyssey with a bit of over-the-top reiteration, along with the missing component of a sense of unity. However, even when Odysseus wasn’t on a scene, the lines of the story still indicate that he is...
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...Over time, women have been portrayed as helpless in many cultures. In Homer’s epic The Odyssey, it is clear that the Greeks were one to think that. Throughout the story, different female characters are introduced. None of them are exactly as they seem to be. they all negatively affect the male characters of the story at one point. Circe, with her beauty, deceives Odysseus’ men which results in them turning into pigs. The Sirens, with their voices, seduce the sailors and forces them to steer into the rocks. Scylla and Charybdis can be classified as dangerous by forcing sailors to choose between the two of them. They all play a part in Odysseus’ adventure home, but they delay his return rather than speed it up. Due to their assumption that women are helpless, they do not recognize the potential danger they possess. This allows the women to easily attack men. In “Book 10” of The Odyssey, the goddess Circe is given a role in Odysseus’ trip home. She is first seen singing and weaving as Odysseus’ crew decides to greet her. Upon entering her home, they notice dangerous animals such as wolves and lions are present,...
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...The role of women in The Odyssey Women weren’t taken seriously for much in human history. There were things that men were allowed to do, but women wouldn’t even dare to think about. Basically, they were puppets used by men and those who were rich. They were treated as the weaker gender, the gender who was not capable of doing a man’s job. In resume, they would be used and had to follow orders. In The Odyssey, Odysseus was known as an epic hero, a brave, challenging, intelligent man. No one actually saw him as the unfaithful husband. In his journey back to his sweet home, he had made love to two women. Those two women were Calypso and Circe, both beautiful and evil. His little adventures were seeing as sacrifices to save his crew. “And now...
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...The Odyssey Haleigh Pavy O’ Brother where art thou is a great representation of the Odyssey. It shows great representation of the characters and mood and also of each other. It turns a fiction epic to a real life story. The Odyssey is a epic about how this king named Odysseus went over seas to the Trojan War. He was there for ten years, on his journey back he got cursed by a cyclops, he got all his men killed and he got stuck on circes island for seven years. Then after twenty years of being gone he finally returns home to suitors, impersonators, and he returns disguised as a beggar. O’ Brother where art thou is about how three escaped prisoners go off to find “treasure”. Everette who represents Odysseus really just wants to get home with...
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...change, our ideas & values must adjust to our transforming environment, and as a result of this, the meaning of older works of literature may become lost. To overcome this, earlier texts are appropriated. This means that the old stories and texts are transformed into a new context, which leads to new ideas forming and an introduction of differing perspectives. Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ was written almost 3000 years ago, and is considered to be part of canonical literature....
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...In The Odyssey and The Siren Song, both Homer and Margaret Atwood depict women as beautiful yet manipulative creatures. The Sirens are mythical beings that are half human half bird whom are defined as dangerous yet beautiful creatures that no man could resist, except for Odysseus. Odysseus and his men approach the island of the Sirens, and Odysseus, as instructed by Circe, plugs his men's ears with beeswax and has them bind him to the mast of the ship. Although Homer’s The Odyssey connotes the Sirens as vicious and eerie, Margaret Atwood’s Siren Song depicts the creatures as mysterious yet beautiful creatures, which is conveyed through each author’s use of figurative language and diction. In The Odyssey, the Sirens are characterized as irresistible yet evil creatures. No man can resist them, except for Odysseus. He was able to resist the temptation by tying himself down and putting beeswax in his shipmates’ ears, so that they can avoid the women as well. Homer proves how inevitable the Sirens voices are by...
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...Both the Odyssey and the Aeneid describe the journeys of the two Greek heroes –Odysseus and Aeneas, as they struggle towards their goal through the crises and deadly situations caused by the wrath of the gods upon them. In the Odyssey, we see that Poseidon (god of the sea/earth shaker) has a grudge against Odysseus while Athena, god of wisdom, aids him throughout his journey. Similarly in the Aeneid, we see that goddess Juno dislikes Aeneas as he is destined to destroy the city of Carthage loved by Juno during his mission to find a new land- Rome, whereas Aeneas’ mother Venus aids him. In these epics, many points of similarity and differences arise such as the characters of the heroes, how their journeys are delayed by women obsessed with love, what they are destined for and how they achieve the final goal in the end of the epic. The very first similarity we see in both the epics is that Virgil starts his poem in the same way Homer does, that is they both refer to Muses to sing about the epic heroes of Greek mythology- Odysseus and Aeneas. Virgil again refers to Muses for the second time in book six of the Aeneid. Another similarity is the assembly of gods in Olympus described by both Virgil and Homer. As seen in the Odyssey, Odysseus’ character is clever and smart one. He is a learner and later becomes self controlling. His ‘never give up’ attitude shows that he can go through any situation to get what he wants. Also, his character is full of twists and turns. While in the Aeneid...
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...The Essential Role of Goddess in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey Just as women were viewed as inferior to men during Homer’s era, a first glance at Homer’s epics The Iliad and The Odyssey portrays goddesses as inferiors to gods. Despite the era’s bias to men, the goddesses are of equal importance to the plot of his stories as the gods. The goddesses play vital roles as either helpers or nightmares to men by often determining the results of an action. Homer did not establish the goddesses in his epics merely as minor structures to blend in the background. Rather, he established dynamic goddesses who were both powerful and intelligent. In fact, in many ways the goddesses controlled the gods by having an influence in their decisions and actions through manipulation, persuasion and guidance. By influencing the gods, the goddesses also played a large role as shepherds for human fate. The goddess’s constant intervention in the mortals’ lives was driven by favoritism, love or sexual desires, and their pity for the weak. Although the goddesses are often restricted from doing as they wish by the gods, they have proven, in many occasions, to overpower the gods through manipulation. Goddesses were often told what to do by the gods. Tasks such as delivering messages from Zeus were often carried out by Athena. Just as Hector told his wife, “Go home, attend to your own handiwork at loom and spindle, and command the maids to busy themselves, too. As for war, that is for men, all we...
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...plenty of different ways in Homer’s The Odyssey that he portrays women in the epic. During this time period, women did not have many rights and everything was left to the men. In Homer’s poem, not only do women portray beauty, but they also portray power. Most women that are read about in this epic are usually a goddess that have great beauty or mystical powers. Homer also portrays them as smarter and wiser as men. Some of the women are evil but there are also some that are good. There are many women that portray power in this epic and the most powerful are Penelope, Athena, and Circe. One very important woman in the epic was Penelope. Not only was she Odysseus’s main goal to get back to, but she was also his motivation. Penelope was not...
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...Women in Greek culture during Homer’s time were considered; to be subservient and docile while the men were considered to be strong and powerful. However, the role and personality of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, in the epic The Odyssey is not the image of a weak woman. Athena is just as strong and as powerful as men in protecting and guiding Odysseus and Telemachus throughout the epic. The paragon of the Greek woman back in Homer’s time was someone who was weak willed, subservient, and overtly emotional. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus is a suitable example as she is docile and a damsel in distress type figure. During the long absence of her husband, Penelope is trapped with the suitors, forever chasing after her. While she despises the suitors in her house, she has no control over her...
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...The movie O Brother, Where Art Thou clearly is a modern representation of Homer’s The Odyssey. There are multiple people and scenes in the movie that are similar to those in The Odyssey. Not only are there obvious similarities but also minor ones that not everyone may catch. Throughout this paper, you will believe the fact that this movie resembles the myth in plenty of ways. To point out the obvious, Homer’s ‘Odysseus is represented by Ulysseus. They both let their pride get in front of them. Also, the way their relationship with their crew is close to exact. Both crews question their leader for some decisions they make get them into trouble. Odysseus and Ulysseus outsmart people plenty of times. Specific times were when Odysseus tricked the Cyclopes into thinking his name was “No Name”, and Ulysseus tricks his ‘crew’ into believing they are going to search for a treasure when really he just wants to get his wife back. Like I just stated, Ulysseus went on his journey to stop his wife, Penny, from marrying a suitor. In resemblance, Odysseus has to make it home to his wife, Penelope, to save her from marrying one of the many suitors that are living in his home, waiting for her to wed one of them. When Odysseus returns to his homeland, his son doesn’t recognize him right away, same as Ulysseus’ daughters deny it’s him because they believe he was dead. As you can see, there are plenty of obvious similarities, but there are just as many non-obvious similarities. When Odysseus...
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...virtue”). In Homer’s “The Odyssey”, Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, father of one son, and husband of a noble wife. After leaving Ithaca to fight in the Trojan War, Odysseus faces a short journey home, in which he makes bad decisions that cause him to take much longer to arrive back in Ithaca than he should have. Odysseus’s selfishness, disloyalty, and mercilessness eliminated any chances he had of being a hero. Some may argue that Odysseus was a hero because of his extreme cleverness or cunning ways. Yes, Odysseus was clever and cunning, but in most situations he did not apply those skills correctly. Therefore, Odysseus was most definitely not a hero. To begin with, Odysseus’s selfishness is made obvious during his encounter with Polyphemus. Everything he does is for the good of himself. Every action he takes is only taken to build onto his ego. If Odysseus had not decided to provide the Cyclops with all his information, his journey...
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...Loyalty in The Odyssey Many human cultures assign values as well as worthiness to the existence of loyalty. As a Classical culture known for its emphasis of loyalty at home as well as abroad, the faithfulness of ancient Greeks in their relationships is exemplified in many Classical texts, such as Homer’s The Odyssey. In both ancient Greece as well as in The Odyssey, loyalty was the social norm because of the egalitarian nature of the city-state as well as because of the typical ancient Greek family structure. Not only because of social expectations as well as traditions was loyalty expected, but there was also an added pressure by one’s religious conviction such that it was believed that if the guests were in any way or manner mistreated, then the ancient Greek deities would punish the offender(s). There are several passages in Homer’s Classical text The Odyssey which illustrate these aspects of ancient Greek loyalty. In illustration of the faithfulness between Odysseus as well as his crew, there is a passage that notes loyalty in the crew-leader relationship: He saw the town as well as learned the minds of many distant men, as well as weathered many bitter nights as well as days his deep heart at sea, while he fought only to save his life, to bring his shipmates home. But not by will or valor could he save them, for their own recklessness destroyed them all- children as well as fools they killed as well as feasted on the cattle of Lord Helios, the Sun… (651). It would initially...
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...Biography of Homer (?-? BC) Beyond a few fragments of information, historians and classicists can only speculate about the life of the man who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey. The details are few. We do not even know the century in which he lived, and it is difficult to say with absolute certainty that the same poet composed both works. The Greeks attributed both of the epics to the same man, and we have little hard evidence that would make us doubt the ancient authorities, but uncertainty is a constant feature of scholarly work dealing with Homer's era of Greek history. The Greeks hailed him as their greatest poet, as well as their first. Although the Greeks recognized other poets who composed in Greek before Homer, no texts from these earlier poets survived. Perhaps they were lost, or perhaps they were never written down‹Homer himself was probably on the cusp between the tradition of oral poetry and the new invention of written language. Texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey existed from at least the sixth century BC, and probably for a considerable span of time before that. These two great epic poems also had a life in performance: through the centuries, professional artists made their living by reciting Homer, performing the great epics for audiences that often know great parts of the poem by heart. It is impossible to pin down with any certainty when Homer lived. Eratosthenes gives the traditional date of 1184 BC for the end of the Trojan War, the semi-mythical...
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