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Essay On Heroes In The Odyssey

1584 Words7 Pages

In Homer’s The Odyssey we are presented with a interesting and quite controversial protagonist, odysseus. There are many different types of heroes which mostly include superheroes and regular heros. Odysseus most certainly does not fall into the category of super hero mostly because of his blatant disregard of his men's lives and his unloyalty to his wife but he does fit into the simple hero category mostly because of his physical and spirituality. He provides everything a hero needs physically looking the part and he also runs into danger instead of away from it which also is a key characteristic of a hero. He also provides the leadership characteristic with making men follow his every move and really questioning him. Most importantly he almost perfectly follows Joseph Campbell's hero cycle. Odysseus call to adventure is ten years after the trojan war has ended and odysseus is helplessly trapped on Calypso's island, Ogygia. Calypso is madly in love with odysseus and unwilling to let him leave and furthermore Odysseus has no ship or crew to help him get home. As Odysseus dreams of being home with his wife and son they are fighting off suitors who have come to pillage odysseus land and try to marry his wife penelope. With his son Telemachus unable to do anything against the mass of suitors Odysseus takes another step on his hero cycle with assistance from Athena. Athena is odysseus biggest …show more content…

Odysseus's new life is him wanting to be able to live out his days with Penelope in peace “We’ve both suffered. I will never leave you again, except to fulfill the prophecy given me by the ghost of Tiresias on the shores of death.” (book 23, pg 234). The second to last part of the hero's cycle is resolution which is basically odysseus killing the suitors who have been torching his soon and trying to court his wife for the last 20 years. After he has killed the suitors and dealt with their families he to a extent has

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