In lines 23.183-204 of the Odyssey Odysseus is trying to prove to his wife that he really is himself, and that he is not a manifestation of a trick being played on her by the gods. Penelope has tricked Odysseus into betraying himself to her by...

In his epic poems, Homer often chooses commonplace objects to symbolically encompass many themes of the story. In The Iliad, a golden nail-studded scepter embodies the major themes of the epic, and the marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope serves...

Odysseus' disastrous encounter with the Laistrygones is a useful reference point for analyzing the nature of guest-host relationships in The Odyssey. When it is compared with his arrivals at the lands of the Phaiakians and the hands of the...

In the Homeric world, the very roots of stories were gendered. The Muses, who inspired humans to create story and song, were women, the daughters of Memory. Stories thus have gendered identities from their very inception, and in the Odyssey, the...

Which scenes of the Odyssey between Odysseus' return to Ithaca and his slaughter of the Suitors show Homer at his best as a story teller.' (Books 14-24)

In the Odyssey Homer has created a poem to stir the depths of an audience's emotions, able to...

The foreboding dark mist in âthe gloom of the nightâ? (141) shadowing Odysseusâ arrival to the island of the Cyclopes suggests a sinister and frightening site. Recounting the unnaturalness of the occupants and the horror of the ensuing events,...

From its beginnings, literature has been characterized to a remarkable degree by narratives and images of journeys. What gets many texts started and what keeps them going is very commonly a journey of some sort. However, these journeys are not...

Homer's The Odyssey is the epic tale of Odysseus and his travels home from the Trojan War, facing monsters, mutiny, and other countless setbacks. Throughout the story, Odysseus is stuck maneuvering between two gods, Poseidon and Athena. Their...

In both Homer's The Odyssey and Sophocles' Antigone, violence and war seem to be considered honorable; great fighters such as Antilokhos, Akhilleus and Odysseus of The Odyssey and Eteocles of Antigone are glorified and celebrated as exemplary...

When reading the works of Homer, we find that an ever-present theme in his poetry is the relative insignificance of mortals and their creations. Relative, that is, to the much grander scale of the natural world. Yet in Homeric terms the natural...

The characters in Homer's The Odyssey are forever at the mercy of the Gods, those immortals who live in the heights of Mount Olympus, and who, on occasion, walk the lands of earth. Throughout the epic poem the main characters are visited quite...

Near the beginning of Book 23 in The Odyssey, the reader is struck with a scene so subtle in its beauty that it seems unreal, especially following the brutal slaughter of the suitors and serving women. In the complex and tender passage describing...

The eagle's eyes roam the landscape from its perch, searching for its quarry from above. Suddenly a rustle of movement captures its full attention: a dove, perching lightly on the branch of an olive tree. Immediately, the eagle rises from its own...

Previous tradition held that Homer, the ancient, blind poet who sang of a heroic age that was long past even in his own day, composed this magnificent poem. Contemporary literary theory disputes not only Homer's claim to complete authority over...

Homer's Odyssey is a testament to how Homer believes people should conduct themselves in society. His characters are rewarded when they conduct themselves ideally and they are punished when they fail to abide by certain behavioral codes. One of...

The name "Odysseus" resonates in the creak of opening doors in the city of Troy, the murmur of waves, and the song of the Sirens. Over the course of the epic tale, Odysseus' heroism proves far more nuanced than the simple feats of his success at...

Homer's epic The Odyssey is superimposed on the backdrop of a typical ancient Greek society. As the main character, Odysseus, and his companions travel from place to place on their way to their hometown of Ithaka, various people welcome them in a...

Throughout western history, enormous gender differences have been evident in both monotheistic and polytheistic cultures. Indeed, the patriarchal hierarchies in both social systems have emphasized the superiority of the male sex; however, greater...

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

the wanderer, harried for years on end,

after he plundered the stronghold

on the proud height of Troy.

He saw the townlands

and learned the minds of many...

The character of Nausikaa is somewhat of an anomaly within The Odyssey. Among women, she is a wholly developed character. Though such depth initially engages Odysseus, it becomes the force that propels him to his ultimate homecoming.

A remarkable...

A tool consistently employed by the Greeks was that of imagery, and within the genre of tragedy and the epic they have demonstrated their mastery of the device. Imagery within tragedy adds a necessary and otherwise unattainable sub-story to the...

In Greek myth, Sisyphus repeatedly rolls a giant boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down the peak every time. He serves a sentence of eternal suffering for trying to escape from Death and Hades. Like Sisyphus, the warriors of Homer's...

The characteristics of Homeric epic are many and varied, but the key elements of the Odyssey and the Iliad can be narrowed down to two main things: a focus on one hero (Achilles and Odysseus, respectively) and the need for that hero to attain...

THE ODYSSEY BOOK III: THE LORD OF THE WESTERN APPROACHES

Book Three illustrates a number of important ongoing themes of The Odyssey. Books One through Four are called "The Telemacheia." They relay the tale of Odysseus' son, Telemachus, and his...