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Elements of the hero's journey
Elements of the hero's journey
Elements of the hero's journey
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Elements of the hero's journey
Elements of the hero's journey
Elements of the hero's journey
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
As eager as Odysseus is to get back home to his wife and son in Ithaca, the shipmates on board with him are struggling with hunger and the loss of energy. Looking at Odysseus’ intense determination to return to his town, it seems as if the only idea that is filled in his mind is to go back to Ithaca without looking at the tired condition of his shipmates. Odysseus’ yelled difficult orders and tasks that were expected to be fulfilled by his sailors, and for the most part they were able to complete it. Looking at the poor men rowing day and night over the monstrous waves, Odysseus never gave them a chance to take a break and enjoy a single meal, until one shipmate decided to speak up. Even so, Odysseus was narrow-minded and thought only about
“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” -Erich Fromm ‘The Odyssey’ by Homer, follows the story of Odysseus, a great Greek hero. It tells of his venture to Troy, to lead his army in the Trojan War, and his separation from loved ones and his kingdom for twenty years. However, the novel mainly focuses on the story of his homecoming and all he, and many others, had to endure while he was returning from abroad.
The natives there gave Odysseus and his men an intoxicating fruit of the lotus. After Odysseus and his men eat the fruit, they forget all of their thoughts about home and decide to eat more of the fruit. The only way that Odysseus can get him and his men back home is by dragging his men back to the ship and lock them up, Odysseus decides to go along with it. When Odysseus went back to Ithaca, He made the wise choice to go and see his wife Penelope. Odysseus was so brave to go see his wife because he didn’t know if she was going to recognize him at all or want to be with him for the rest of her life.
Though intelligent, Odysseus lacks the wisdom to control his nature. “He comes to grief because he cannot resist the temptation to gloat over his victory and make sure that his enemy knows the identity of his vanquisher” (494). Over the course of his journey for self knowledge, Odysseus slowly becomes more and more aware of his fault in character. He finds himself allowed to return to his native Ithaca after remaining on Calypso’s island for years. In a sense, his imprisonment there had served as penance.
He is so loyal and goal oriented to getting home that he rejected the offer and wants to leave the island to find home. Odysseus breaks news to Calypso, “Yet, it is true, each day / I long for home. Long for the sight of home…. “(5. 85-86).
Odysseus is talking to Athena when she tells him he has arrived at Ithaca. Odysseus is shell-shocked and come back saying, “But now I beg you by your almighty Father’s name…/for I can’t believe I’ve reached my sunny Ithaca,/ I must be roaming around one more exotic land–/ you’re mocking me, I know it, telling me tales/ to make me lose my way. Tell me the truth now, have I really reached that land I love?” (13. 367-373).
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
He has been dropped off back on Ithaca by the Phaeacians. On his journey back to Ithaca Odysseus has changed greatly. As the prophecy has said he has returned home on a strangers ship, without his crew, and as a broken man. Odysseus has gone to his loyal swine herder, Eumaeus. This passage that is spoken by Eumaeus represents two themes.
In the epic poem written by Homer, The Odyssey, the king of Ithaca named Odysseus sails home from the war at Troy. Along the way, he and his men encounter a lot of tedious obstacles. They go to Ismarus as well as discover the island of the Lotus, and the Lotus eaters who live on the island. Odysseus and his men also find a cyclops named Polyphemus, which they find out is the son of Poseidon. The land of Hades, or the land of the dead, is another place they travel to.
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
In literature, a common process for the protagonist to go through is to go on a journey in order for them to develop as a character and to further the story as a whole. This idea of a character’s journey is notably seen in Homer’s The Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, and Voltaire’s Candide. All three of these texts depict not only the protagonist going through a journey, but they also depict in very different ways these characters use their abilities to overcome obstacles in their path and learn from their mistakes to show their individual character development. In The Odyssey, Inferno, and Candide, Odysseus, Dante and Candide show three different ways how ????????
Imagine being apart from your family for over ten years, fighting for your life in a war, and in the many battles and problems you will face on your way home from war. Would you be able to fight a cyclops, pass a dangerous whirlpool and have to face the fact that your crew betrayed you? In the novel The Odyssey written by Homer, Odysseus must do all of these things and more. He has been away from his wife, son and many other family members for over ten years now, fighting for his life on his journey home after fighting in the Trojan war.
John Ruskin once said, “The first test of truly great man is his humility”. In The Odyssey, an epic poem by Homer, the central character Odysseus learns humility through his failures and growth in obedience making him a hero. Odysseus reaches a heroic status through the lessons learned on his journey, which ultimately taught him the value of obedience and the dangers of arrogance. Initially, Odysseus appears to lack the heroic quality of humility, through his narcissistic nature.
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
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.