Poseidon And The Home Guard In Homer's Odyssey

Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain has a parallel plot as Homer’s Odyssey. Though Charles Frazier wrote Cold Mountain centuries after Homer wrote Odyssey, many of the characters have similar roles, such as Poseidon and the Home Guard. Poseidon from Odyssey and the Home Guard from Cold Mountain resemble each other because they both patrol a wide range of territory, prolong the protagonist’s journey, and act as the protagonist’s main enemy. Poseidon and the Home Guard both patrol most of the territory the protagonist traverses across. In Odyssey, Odysseus travels from Troy to Ithaca mainly by water, which Poseidon controls. In fact, water is such a huge part of the journey that Menelaus has to ask Proteus, the old man of the sea, for directions. Proteus asks Menelaus, “How can you cross the swarming sea and reach home at last?” (Homer 137). Likewise, in Cold Mountain, Inman travels from Virginia to North Carolina through forests, where the Home Guard scout. Inman noticed that “Beyond the fields stood flatwoods. Nothing but trash trees” (Frazier, 69). In the respective books, Poseidon and the

Unlike regular enemies in the books, Poseidon and the Home Guard are the biggest enemy. For example, in the Odyssey, after Odysseus and his men escape from Polyphemus, he calls “out to lord Poseidon, thrusting his arms to the starry skies, and prayed” (Homer, 228). This proves Poseidon is a more dangerous enemy than Polyphemus. Also, in Cold Mountain, Junior calls the Home Guard and trades Inman for money. Junior says, “I get five dollars a head for every outlier I turn over” (Frazier, 222). Junior call the Home Guard, a higher power, and sells Inman to them. These similar scenarios prove that Poseidon and the Home Guard resemble each other. Overall, Poseidon and the Home Guard are the highest antagonistic power in the book; Poseidon is a God with control of water, and the Home Guard capture and kill