Listening To The Sirens In Homer's The Odyssey

he Odyssey was a book passed down orally from generation to generation, but there is a reason it is still alive. Mythological stories were thought up to scare or teach lessons that are way more in depth in their stories rather just the surface. For example, In The Odyssey the story of the Sirens was conceived as a tale to show how others react in certain situations. Odysseus is sailing through Poseidon’s ocean and is coming across the sea of the Sirens. Odysseus wants to be able to hear the Siren’s tail or song and survive. Odysseus then tied himself to the mast of the boat and orders the crewmen to put wax in their ears so they couldn’t hear the Siren’s song. Odysseus then listened to the song of the Sirens. The crewmen rowed without acknowledging the Siren’s presence.

The crewmen also did not untie Odysseus because he said not to untie him no matter what happened to him. Odysseus was the only man able hear the Siren’s song without dying or end up missing. People who are listening to the Sirens are actually listening to people trapped in the Siren’s feather suit. Artist John William Waterhouse and poet Margaret Atwood took this tale to a next level by examining people’s actions in different conditions. In the painting Ulysses and the Sirens, The artist John Williams Waterhouse uses the Myth of the Sirens to show that in a threatening situation a person can still overcome fears if focused on their goals; while in the poem Sirens Song, Margaret Atwood uses the same scene to show that beauty can look very tempting but trusting something by beauty alone cannot insure