The Odyssey Essays

The SuitorsIn Homer’s Odyssey, it has been sixteen years since Odysseus left his home in Ithaca for war. Many men from other lands thinking Odysseus is dead, intrude his kingdom and try to take power. The suitors steal and plunder Odysseus’ hall, feast on his food, take his maids to …

Life in the United States was anything but heavenly for Asian Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As vividly described in Mary Paik Lee’s autobiography, “Quiet Odyssey”, a very large majority of the Asian American population residing in America during this time period “never had enough money …

Elaborate sacrifices, wonderful feasts, jubilant celebrations, all of which are acts that demonstrate the reverence of humans for the supernatural gods; a common motif in both the ancient Mesopotamia depicted in Gilgamesh, and the ancient Greece of The Odyssey. What seems to be a perfectly harmonious relationship between men seeking …

The Odyssey, fate plays an important part in the story development. People who believe in fate or destiny think that their lives are spun out in front of them before they are born, and there is nothing they can do to change that. Some characters, like Polyphemos, find out their …

The divine intervention of the gods in human affairs is a familiar aspect in the epic poem, The Odyssey by Homer. Throughout the first five books of the tale, there are several occurrences where gods interfere in the lives of both Odysseus and his son . Sometimes these interferences are …

More than twenty-five hundred years ago a renowned epic of Greek mythology was written. This work, known as The Odyssey, illustrates the journey home made by Odysseus, a Trojan war hero, who seeks his wife Penelope. Similar in plot, though written only four years ago, Cold Mountain is a romantic …

The two characters have very diverse personalities and proceedings. Personally, I believe Odysseus is the wittier character. He is faced with far more challenges than Penelope, and even though he does make mistakes, you must remember he is merely human. I think the following quote best supports my thesis, “When …

The word mature, by definition, is the emergence of personal and behavioral characteristics through growth processes. In life people mature day by day because of different challenges they have to face, and different lessons that they learn. This idea of maturing is seen all over the world in numerous places. …

In Homer’s Odyssey, the women are portrayed in many different ways, some are said to be wise while others are cruel, but many are treated differently from the opposite gender. One of the women in the story, Penelope, was portrayed as very wise but because of her gender she was …

Omen birds are an important theme in the Odyssey. They are important prophecies. Omen birds play a much stronger part in Ithaca and in Telemachus’s story than in the Odyssey. In The Odyssey, omen birds foretell the killing of the suitors, Odysseus’s homecoming, and reassure Telemachus that his house will …