Family Loyalty In Homer's The Odyssey

Family loyalty is an important thing. As a family, trust and respect are needed to make a home run smoothly. I have two sisters and a brother whom I am loyal to and who are loyal to me. If something were to happen to them I would do whatever was needed to help them and they would do the same for me. We are all protective of each other but we also are have much fun together. The Odyssey shows loyalty like a family too. Loyalty in The Odyssey is extremely important and prevalent virtue as it is shown by Penelope’s hopefulness, Odysseus’s perseverance, and other characters’ almost unrecognized acts of homage.

The largest act of loyalty is shown by Penelope with her hope for the life of her husband, Odysseus. One way in the story that Penelope

Since the beginning of The Odyssey, Odysseus has been trying to return to Ithaca. In a travel guided by uncontrollable storm winds from the wind god, Aeolus, Odysseus’s ships land on the island of the goddess, Circe. Circe turns all of Odysseus's men into pigs. As Odysseus rushes to find her to beg her to let his men free, messenger god Hermes stops him and bestows upon him a plant to diminish Circe’s power. When Circe realizes that she has no power to turn him into a pig too, she begins to persuade Odysseus into staying and feasting with her. After much feasting and other nice things, Odysseus and the men begin to beg Circe to help them get home. She tells them to go to the land of the dead and seek wisdom from a dead, blind prophet named Teiresias (913). Odysseus shows his loyalty to the gods and to Penelope both at this moment. He obeys Circe when she tells him to go to the underworld and he perseveres through the underworld to get to Teiresias in order that there may be a chance to return to his Penelope. Once more Odysseus proves his loyalty to Penelope when he passes through the Sirens. The sirens sing to him and his men trying to get them to jump to their deaths, but Odysseus outsmarts them with the help of a god. Odysseus fills his men's ears with wax so that they cannot hear the songs of

In an early adventure, the adventure with the lotus eaters, some of Odysseus’s men are still a little obedient. Odysseus originally sends two men to look for provisions on the island of the lotus eaters. The men that were looking for provisions got caught up with the lotus eaters and begin to eat the flower. Odysseus now takes more of his men to find provisions and his other men who had been sent first. These new men help to drag their dazed lotus filled friends back to the boat just as Odysseus said, they then obey him again when he orders them to row away quickly (Konchalovsky). This shows their loyalty because they do exactly what Odysseus asks and do not eat the flowers. Their acts of loyalty tend to go unnoticed because readers tend to focus on how badly the men behave and how disobedient they are to Odysseus and the gods. One of the sweetest acts of loyalty is shown by a dog. This really proves that dog is man’s best friend or at least man is dog’s best friend. The dog is Odysseus's old hunting dog, Argos, who waits for twenty years until he can see his master again. He was a puppy when Odysseus left, but when Odysseus returns the once lively puppy has turned into an old decrepit dog who lays next to the city gate being treated like trash. Even old decrepit Argos recognizes his master beneath the disguise of a beggar unlike everybody else. Because he