Odysseus In Homer's The Odyssey

Penelope waited a long, lingering twenty years for her beloved Odysseus return to Ithaka and into her arms. Penelope proved her loyalty by ?wearing out [her] lifetime with desire/ and sorrow, mindful of [her] lord, good man/? (Homer 18:229-230). Even though the pestering suitors were like vulture swarming in on fresh meat Penelope was able to hold them at bay with her faithful devotion to her mighty Odysseus. In order to do this the cunning and wily Penelope lead them to believe that she would marry one of them only to later let them down. She used the weaving of the funeral shroud for Lord Laertes to keep them under control. ?So everyday she wove on the loom-/ but every night by torchlight she unwove it;? (Homer 1:110-111). Attestation of Penelope?s loyalty to Odysseus is the unweaving of the shroud because she did not want to marry one of the suitors and had full confidence in her beloved king?s return. The archery test that Penelope purposes is functioning to hold off the suitors, for none are a match for Odysseus, as well as prompting Odysseus to proving himself to her. ?Upon Penelope, most worn in love and thought, / Athena cast a glance like a gray sea/ lifting her. Now to bring the tough bow out and bring/ the iron blades. Now try those dogs at archery.? (Homer 21:1-4). Penelope tests Odysseus to make him prove that it is he before she will trust him. The test of the bedpost that she puts to Odysseus once again proves Penelope?s

As an innocent young boy watches his mother being killed by the cruel bank robbers, he vowed to himself he will avenge his mother’s death. He struggled through the bitter winter but he survived through the determination of revenge. Similarly, Roger Chillingworth, from Hawthorne’s renowned The Scarlet Letter, also thrives on revenge due to his wife’s disloyalty. As Chillingworth’s vengeance eats away at him, he transforms from a courteous man to a sadistic man; since Chillingworth is the driving force of the novel, he eventually evolves into a man he does not even recognize himself. Throughout this novel, Hawthorne argues extreme jealousy can turn an amiable person into a vengeful monster.

Her forgotten husband and her son await her in the now empty and spotless hall. Telemachus, noticing his mother’s skepticism of Odysseus, becomes agitated and chides his mother. Consequently, Odysseus suggests to the prince to leave so his parents could speak alone. Penelope, still skeptical of Odysseus, tests him by telling the servants to put his homemade bed outside. Subsequently, Odysseus goes into an uproar, claiming he constructed the bed by hand out of a living olive tree and built their house around the sacred tree. Penelope, now sure that Odysseus is her husband, spends the night with Odysseus for the first time in twenty

With a multitude of suitors taking over her house during Odysseus’ absence, Penelope has no authority over the men and cannot tell them to leave because of her gender. Because of this, she had to come up with strategies to avoid marriage and remain faithful to Odysseus. In one instance, Penelope tells the suitors that she will marry after she has finished weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus: “...she used to work at her great web in the daylight, and unravelled it at night by torchlight” (263). She uses her sharp intellect to deceive the suitors because she knows they cannot protest her wish to honor Odysseus. While Penelope strives to remain faithful, Circe uses her femininity as a tool.

Odysseus has never truly been alone in the Odyssey. Throughout the Odyssey, Odysseus has always had Poseidon, Athena, and Hermes by his side. Whether their actions had a positive effect or not, they were always by his side. He had many other gods and goddesses that pushed him along the way but, these three really had a huge impact on his journey.

During the episode on Polyphemus’ island, Odysseus needs to improve on using wisdom/logic. Odysseus takes his men into the cave and they very quickly get the idea that the Cyclops do not want them there. His men tried to turn him back, but they stayed despite the Cyclops obvious bad intentions and Odysseus acted as if he would be treated as a well-respected guest. Only after many of his men are devoured by Polyphemus does Odysseus start to formulate his plan. While in the cave, Odysseus says that Polyphemus “beat their brains out, splattering the floor” (Homer 194). Odysseus should have thought through the situation and tried to create an escape plan much faster. He needed to use his judgment and common sense to spare several of his best men’s lives instead of telling the Cyclops that “any gifts/ you give – as custom is to honor strangers”

After seven years of luxury, Odysseus decided he wanted to leave Calypso to go back home to his wife, Penelope, and son. Calypso then envies Penelope and says,“...and yet I just might claim to be nothing less than she (Odysseus’ mortal wife), neither in face nor figure. Hardly right, is it, for mortal

Unlike Odysseus Penelope is confined by the gender roles of her time and cannot use physical strength against the suitors or even direct verbal rejection, instead Penelope resorts to her emotional resilience and wit in order to challenge the suitors. She wrongly reassures the suitors that once she finishes weaving a gift for Odysseus’s father, she will choose someone to marry her, “’Young men, my suitors, let me finish my weaving, before I marry’…every day she wove on the great loom but every night by torchlight she unwove it.” (II. 103-104, 112-113) Penelope’s actions are strategic and well calculated. Her main goal, like Odysseus, is to successfully overcome her situation. She understands that she may not be able to physically fight the suitors but she can trick them until Telemachus or Odysseus are able to. By crafting a lie that delays the suitors from marrying her immediately, Penelope restrains the suitors from seizing Ithaca, her household, and posing a threat to Telemachus or Odysseus. Her lie gives Odysseus a crucial advantage in the physical fight against the suitors as he comes back to a city and household where Penelope

Penelope was in the room. She was upset with and bawled at me. I know she’s married to Odysseus, but I want her for my own. My men and I lined up at her house every day since Odysseus left. My green eyes were glowering with anger when I heard those words. I know she doesn’t love me, or want to marry me, but anything to get into her arms.

Other than Penelope, Eurykleia is one of few inhabitants on Ithaca who remains unwaveringly loyal to Odysseus; as a servant she is perseveringly devoted to Penelope. In her family’s absence she protects her master’s riches as she the “housekeeper was about, keeping charge of everything with depth of her experience”(2. 345-6). As housekeeper, she follow’s her master’s every order, and at their command “bolt[s] the close fitting doors to the hall”(21.281), in preparation of Odysseus and Telemachus’s retaliation against the suitors.

To the suitors Odysseus is a small minor thought in the back of their minds rather than a famous and powerful warrior they are robbing. This altered perception and memory of Odysseus strips him of his heroic renown as a warrior. Later on in the text Penelope, seems to have her own fading memory of Odysseus: “Since there is not now any master in the house like Odysseus- if he ever existed” (19. 345). This indicates how she feels as if she has never had a husband to begin with. In a way she is correct after all what kind of husband abandons his family for nearly two decades? It is in Penelope’s fading memory that one can see Odysseus role as husband slipping away. Finally though Odysseus father Laertes appears to also be forgetting his son’s existence: “How many years has it been since you hosted your ill-fated guest, my son- if I ever had a son?” (24. 290). Laertes, being the previous king of Ithaca, implies not only that he may never have had a son but also suggests that Ithaca may never have had a King after Laertes himself. This final fading memory serves to strip Odysseus of his third title, King of Ithaca. If those closest to Odysseus have begun to forget about him, then to the other Ithacans he may be no more than a rumor or legend. And even Odysseus seems to have given up when he first appears in the text: “His eyes were perpetually wet with tears now, his life draining

Furthermore, Penelope is an important character as her identity “functions as a stable and unchanging reference point for the adventures of Odysseus” (Katz, 6). As Katz explains, Odysseus’ travels are interwoven with his lust for home and his desire to be with his wife again. As well, her identity becomes a parallel to Odysseus’ identity through her use of polutropus (tricks and turns). She proves, by the end of the poem, that she is the perfect match for Odysseus as both of them share the same skills with rhetoric and language to get what they want. Their like-mindedness is evident during the recognition scene between the two. Penelope tests Odysseus’ knowledge of their marital bed - before blindly trusting his claim of identity - by asking the slaves to move their immovable bed: “[putting] her husband to the proof-but Odysseus/ blazed in fury, lashed out at his loyal wife” (Homer, 23.203-204). In his angry response to Penelope’s test, Odysseus proves his identity to his wife as he explains why the bed cannot move. When she hears their familiar story of the creation of their bed, - which only the two and a slave know about - Penelope submits to her long-lost husband in an emotional reunion. Her caution, before accepting Odysseus’ claim, shows the wary protectionism stance that she had to adopt while her husband was gone so she could protect the kingdom from the suitors.

In Homer's epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus is an epic hero with an epic wife, Penelope. Penelope is also the Queen of Ithaca, a vital role indeed. Penelope's love and devotion towards Odysseus is proven when she waits nineteen years for her husband to return from the wine dark sea, rather than losing faith and marrying another man. Penelope's character is strong and solid, and her personality remains consistent throughout Homer's Odyssey.

Odysseus is deceived by Kirke’s beauty and falls for her mysterious ways, but his devotion continues for Penelope. Kirke, deceiving Odysseus with her quick mind, says, “your cruel wandering is all you think of, / never of joy, after so many blows” (Homer 179). Kirke’s desire for the men and her persistence captured Odysseus’s logic, and he ends up living with her for quite awhile, but thankfully his reason comes back. Odysseus’s odyssey was so complex that even small occurrences like the sirens and the lotus plants make him reconsider his priorities and what is truly important to him and his future.

After Odysseus “dies”, Penelope is forced to remarry because women were supposed to be wives and listen to the head of the household. She takes action to delay her forced remarriage by weaving a loom, but was caught in the act and did not succeed in canceling the wedding: “They rush the marriage on, and I spin out my wiles./ […] So by day I'd weave at my great and growing web-/ by night, by the light of torches set beside me,/ I would unravel all I'd done. Three whole years/ I deceived them blind, seduced them with this scheme./ Then, when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on/ and the months waned and the long days came round once more,/ the suitors caught me in the act and denounced me harshly./ So I finished it off. Against my will. They forced me./ And now I cannot escape a marriage, nor can I contrive/ a deft way out” (19.152-177). Penelope was mourning her husband and did not want to be married to anyone but him, and drastically fooled her suitors for almost four years before the maids relayed that she had been unweaving her loom by night. Here, Penelope is not given the choice of remarriage, she is forced to remarry because of her beauty, status, and lack of a man to take care of her, which was normal in these times but is completely outrageous nowadays. Although Penelope was Telemachus’ mother, it made no difference in how she was treated by him and it was made clear his status of superiority over the household: “So, mother,/ go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks,/ the distaff and the loom, and keep the women,/ working hard as well. As for giving orders,/ men will see to that, but I most of all:/ I hold the reins of power in this house”