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Love Relationship Between Odysseus And Penelope

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After a journey for more than twenty years, Odysseus finally went back home with an identity of a strayed beggar and met his wife Penelope in book 19 of the Odyssey. In light of the love philosophies mentioned by several speakers in another book, the Symposium, the love relationship between Odysseus and Penelope can be further discussed by examining the dialogue between the couple in Book 19.

First and foremost, at the beginning of the chapter, before the conversation between the couple started, regardless the background of the beggar-like Odysseus, Penelope treated him as any guest would do, and let him take a seat and asked him questions things about her long lost husband, despite her guest was being look down and discriminated by …show more content…

With reference to her cries and hopeless feeling towards the situation she was facing that time, it is not hard to see that Penelope has a strong desire for the return of her husband for her life.
Taking the words of Eryximachus in the symposium into consideration, where he concludes that love cause happiness and other good actions (188d-e), the reason of why Penelope would cry for her husband for a lot of times can be proved with the opposite of the saying that people would feel unhappy without love. Since the couple in the story has been separated for almost twenty years, being in lack of love from Odysseus, Penelope would feel frustrated and desperate with the absence of her husband.

All in all, taking the dialogue between Odysseus and Penelope in Book 19 of the Odyssey into account, their love relationship can be discussed and analyzed with the love philosophies mentioned by Aristophanes, Phaedrus and Eryximachus in the

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