Examples Of Virtues In The Odyssey

Throughout time, perspectives on what is morally good and bad have been reformed as generations come and go. Prized virtues come and go with the different opinions of those who influence others, lost as they drift away in the wind, but some have stood the test of time and continue to be a shining example of a perfect prized virtue. In the epic poem, The Odyssey, Homer tells the story of the ten year journey home that Odysseus suffered following the Trojan War. While today's society has very prominent virtues that align with Homer's The Odyssey for instance generosity, courage, and respect, some striking virtues in the epic poem, like loyalty and craftiness, have been merely erased from society all over the world as they forge new standards

“‘You can be kind and true and fair and generous and just, and even merciful occasionally,’ Angelou said. ‘But to be that thing time after time, you have to really have courage’”(Ju). This advice from Maya Angelou was told to a graduating class and she is trying to make clear how important courage is to the world. Most virtues today are built off of courage, if you don’t have courage it will be extremely hard to be able to display any other virtue. Respect is known to be one of the most important virtues to learn at an early age, but is it really that important? Studies show from an experiment that roughly 16% of Poland's population would vote respect as their number one virtue. (Pieter van Oudenhoven etal table 2). If the rest of Poland's population followed suit then over 6 million people today would choose respect as their most prized virtue and that’s only in Poland. Generosity is found everywhere today, from big cities to small towns people are always trying to find ways to give. According to the table, France’s most popular virtue is generosity with 55 out of 213 people voting for the virtue or about 26%. That’s more than 1 out of 4 people voting for generosity as their number one virtue. Generosity is seen all over the world in different cultures and it is expressed in many other ways, that

They instead replace them with new and improved virtues. Loyalty is something Odysseus killed people for showing lack of but the only time Loyalty is even mentioned on the Springerplus data table is the tenth virtue in Mexico. Other than that, it's nowhere to be seen. The importance of loyalty has declined heavily from The Odyssey to today's society, from being killed if you don’t show enough to barely being mentioned on top ten around the world, people just don’t have the same passion about loyalty and their ancestors once did. Another virtue that has lost its importance is craftiness. Craftiness in today's perspective is often viewed as sinister instead of a heroic attribute. That is why it is not listed anywhere in the world in regards to a popular positive virtue. The virtues of craftiness isn’t a good thing anymore, the population as a whole has transformed their perspective into viewing craftiness as a vice instead. At the mention of craftiness, there has been a replacement that the whole world seems to agree with, honesty, the very opposite of craftiness. Honesty is so admired by all those around the world to the point where 940 out of 3107 people or (about) over 30% of human beings think honesty is the most important virtue to name (Springerplus). The fact