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Comparing Odysseus And Penelope In Homer's The Odyssey

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Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, contains a man named Odysseus who can relate to today’s soldiers of the military by the power of love. Odysseus fights his way back home seeing he loves his wife monumentally, just as military wives and husbands love their spouse or child. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is king and a loving husband to his wife Penelope. Odysseus and Penelope have a son shortly before Odysseus must fight in the Trojan War for ten years. During the ten years, Odysseus fights for the love and hope of returning to his wife and people back on Ithaca. In the end, Odysseus and his comrades are the victors of the war. After the war ends, Odysseus and his men travel back toward home, but only Odysseus returns. Many lives have been lost over the seven year odyssey Odysseus and his men are taken upon. Odysseus loved all of his men as brothers. This is why both Odysseus and his comrades, when seeing their friends brutally murdered, “cried aloud” (Homer 378) when the cyclops “went on filling his belly with manflesh” (Homer 378). …show more content…

During war, military men and women often fight for the massive love for their country or families. These are the exact feelings Odysseus has when fighting in the Trojan War. When war finally ends for the soldier, all they want to do is return home; just as Odysseus wanted. Tiresias, the blind seer, knows this about Odysseus and specifically tells him. “‘A fair wind and the honey lights of home are all you seek’” (Homer 390). At last, when the military man or woman gets home, their hearts are filled with happiness. They missed the family that they haven’t laid eyes upon in months, or maybe years. Odysseus feels this way when he returns to his wife. “The ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms” (Homer

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When the Trojans bring the hobbyhorse at night, the soldiers ride on the hobbyhorse come out from it and attack Troy. Thanks to Odysseus's strategy, Greek can devour Troy. Maybe many people know about Odysseus's wisdom. However he is also good husband. After finish the Trojan war, Odysseus return to his home for 10years.

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Odysseus is a man, who has been working on going home for twenty years. He is a leader of his men, and will never give up until he gets to his goal or going home to his family. He is faithful to all his men, and he never deceived them. The faithful Odysseus is very hard working trying to help his men get home.

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Odysseus possess the character strengths of loyalty and compassion because he cares deeply for his comrades. For example, Odysseus proves his loyalty to his dead comrade Elpenor when he travels back to the island of Aeaea, “We cut logs in haste and out on the islands jutting headland his funeral rights in sorrow, streaming tears” (12.10-12). Odysseus feels a deep sense of loyalty towards his comrades as shown when he immediately returns to bury his friend. He exhibits compassion and loyalty towards his trusted friends throughout the book; he always puts the safety and well-being of his men first. Furthermore, Odysseus portrays his compassion and loyalty when after gaining Circe’s trust, he demands, “If you really want me to eat and drink, set

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“... Odysseus looked around him, narrow-eyed, for any others who had lain hidden while death’s black fury passed”(Homer 613).This expresses how much power and determination Odysseus use when it comes getting revenge on something important. The ordinary man would not remain standing in a world full of Gods, Goddesses, and Monsters. His connection with his crew members were valuable to him and from the men that died in different locations, he realized that he could not lose

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They say Odysseus is an extraordinary hero. Others might not believe his special skills and statics of achieving his adventurers into returning home. Such extravagant women portray, in “The Odyssey” bringing Odysseus home are the ones to be enlightened by favoritism. The Odyssey’s women Calypso, Nausicaa, and Athena are the reason that Odysseus succeeds in his quest because Calypso is loving, Nausicaa is hospitable, and Athena is protective, as their actions prove.

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Odysseus, just like the woman, has to live with the losses and the suffering of the war, while his dead comrades, like the widow’s husband, do not. In this instance, the woman is representative of all the women in the Trojan War who lost their husbands due to Odysseus’ wrath. He does not cry for his own glory, but rather he empathizes with the widow, and therefore, identifies with all of his victims. Alcinous, through this similarity between Odysseus’ tears and the tears of the female victims of war, is able to see that Odysseus’ connection to the Trojan War is one filled with the pain of losses and guilt, but also the pain of having to carry these memories. These two aspects of pain can only coexist in a person if his identity is the Odysseus being portrayed in these songs.

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At various times throughout the story, mainly through the trials, Odysseus made many decisions and forced his crew to go through many potentially lethal situations without preparing his own crew, or situations that were just a waste of time. This then leads to not only all of his crew being killed but the creation of many bad relationships. The first example of Odysseus mistreating his crew is when he and his crew went through the trails, “No more. Come, / let me tell you about the voyage fraught with hardship / Zeus inflicted on me, homeward bound from Troy...” 9.42-44.

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This sets off many emotions in Odysseus all at once, causing him to weep due to the euphoria of finally holding his wife once again. Odysseus’ persistence in returning home throughout a period of twenty years fulfilled his longing for love and to be reunified with his

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He has been away from home for over twenty years, and his wife for nearly seven, living by himself on a small island. Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, has had men trying to get her hand in marriage ever since Odysseus left to go on his own epic adventure. Penelope, however, refuses, and loyally continues to wait for her husband. They often miss each other, and “Every day for the last seven years he's (Odysseus) has sat on the same rock gazing out to sea, weeping for home and Penelope. Athena speaks to

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For example Odysseus and is talking to his late mother and he says, “Tell me of Father, tell me of the son I left behind me; have they still my place, my honors or have other men assumed them? Do they say that I shall come no more? And tell me of my wife: how runs her though, still with her child, still keeping our domains, or bride again to the best of the Akhaians?” (Homer 190).

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While finally making it home to Ithica, he got word that all was not well at his home and that Penelope was in trouble. People had invaded his home, and these suitors tried to take Penelope for themselves. When Odysseus got word of this he did not rush and try to kill them like he once would have, but instead, he thought and planned his moves. With the help of his son, and servants of his house, they were are able to rid the house of the suitors and have Penelope once again.

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He was the mind that thought up the idea of the Trojan horse to end the war. After the ten year long war, Odysseus and his men had to go on another ten year journey home. Through it, Homer displays that Odysseus’ reason for returning was not the desire of a heroic status, but rather the Greek value of loyalty family and home. Homer uses the way

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In an epic poem, The Odyssey, by Homer, Odysseus struggles to come back home while his wife, Penelope, faces barbarous suitors who plague her house to court her for the marriage in order to claim the kingship of Ithaca. With an absence of the man of the household and a son who is not old enough to rule over the country and handle the domestic complications, Penelope endeavors to keep the household orderly and civilized. In order to prevent further chaos in the household, Penelope maintains her role as the Queen of Ithaca and Odysseus’s wife through her loyalty and cunning. For a woman who does not know when her man will return home, Penelope is extremely strong to keep hope and wait for her husband; thus, her unwavering loyalty to her husband

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We are proud of the love we give and receive, for our children and the habits, emotional responses, obligations and values that we teach them. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is no different and the importance of his family is demonstrated as he weeps tears of sadness in their absence and rejects Calypso’s offer of immortality in exchange for his companionship. “‘My lady goddess, here is no cause for anger. My quiet Penelope—how well I know—would seem a shade before your majesty, death

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Imagine landing in a difficult situation... getting stranded from home, encountering beautiful woman at the same time, but you have a wife. You have to choose your wife, or a beautiful woman. This is exactly what happened to Odysseus on his travels in The Odyssey, by the Greek poet Homer. In this epic poem, Odysseus is married to his wife Penelope and has a happy family, who lives in Ithaca. Even though Odysseus has been stranded from home for many years, he still remains loyal to his wife.

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