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Lessons Learned In The Odyssey

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Someone has just finished reading a thrilling adventure book filled with action and suspense. They immediately exclaim that this is one of their favorite books and with good reason as they really did enjoy it. One of the reasons they seemed to like the book is because of the incredible amount of morals and lessons in it, that all seem to be very agreeable. When reading the Odyssey the reader will also be able to find many lessons that held a lot of truth. A few lessons given in the epic consist of the following. Never being distracted from a goal, Never letting fear overcome the mind, and having self control is an extremely valuable skill. Most of the lessons given were very agreeable as they did seem to be relevant to present life.
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“ Old shipmates, / our stores are in the ship's hold, food and drink;/ the cattle here are not for our provision, / or we pay dearly for it.’’(II 837-840). Here Odysseus's men are told that the cattle they hold does not belong to them and it's not theirs to be eaten. They must now show self control and not eat the cattle no matter how hungry they become. Sadly they were not able to do so and were struck down by Zeus because of this. Additionally, another example that also shows this same lesson can be seen here “ The stool he let fly hit the man's right shoulder/ on the packed muscle under the shoulder blade/ like solid rock, for all the effect one saw./ Odysseus only shook his head, containing/ thoughts of bloody work.’’(II 1228-1232). This is where Odysseus must show very high levels of self control and not do anything that would put the plan they had thought up into disaster. He was able to control himself and in the end the plan was able to work with no flaw. The lesson that having self control is a helpful skill can definitely be relevant today. For instance in the real world imagine that someone is waiting to let the hot chocolate become a bit colder this requires self control because they want to drink this delicious drink but, if they do they will burn their tongue and later won't be able to enjoy

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