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The Role Of The Afterlife In Homer's Odyssey

803 Words4 Pages

Homers complex writing is devoted to the extend he gives on the perspective into the Greek underworld, stories in which were prevailing in the Greek society. The numerous conditions of the reality of the afterlife are deeply described rather than the setting of the underworld. The underworld is described as the House of Hades which is where your death and inevitable fate lies. It is signified in The Odyssey Book XI, concretely in the scenes of Odysseus mother’s death in the Cimmerians, the Greek culture expresses a depressing but inevitable view of death as a complete dichotomy of the fate but shows the indication of more than just one afterlife. In the arrival of Odysseus, the treatment of the dead is surrounded in gloomy depressing afterlife that is within the underworld. “The sun never shines there, never climbs the starry sky to beam down at them…their wretched sky is always racked with the night’s gloom.” (17-19) This text reveals the afterlife is giving no sign of happiness, the skies are …show more content…

Rather than pleading how much this dreadful afterlife is Elpenor seems to care more about his body and remembrance of him not even bringing into context about the painful, lonely and joyless circumstance he’s experiencing. What he cares about is his legacy and how he will be buried, there is no withdraw of their self-knowledge or life they lived but the this signifies that the dead remotely resemble who they were when they were a part of life. Meaning, although in the House of Hades it is dark and gloomy there is still some sort of realization of who you are and what’s happened. Odysseus even recognizes the ghosts immediately, which shows that while their treatment is bad and lonely they aren’t completely stripped of appearance and if they’re recognizable then they must be in good enough health rather than weak and

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