The Odyssey And Speak: A Character Analysis

The Odyssey and Speak both have many common archetypes. The characters suffer, and they go through rebirth and they also go through a sense of loss. In Speak Melinda was raped by one of her classmates and was keeping it a secret her entire freshman year, in the Odyssey, Odysseus was trapped on Calypso’s island for years and was forced to lay with Calypso. The characters’ rebirth in The Odyssey and Speak are both very similar; Melinda finally realizes it is okay to tell someone if something like that happens to her, and Odysseus finally makes it home and is able to feel clean again, and to be with his love Penelope. In both readings, the main characters go through a sense of loss, Odysseus is physically lost at sea, and is trying to make it back home, and Melinda has lost sense of who she is and doesn’t feel herself anymore. These three archetypes will be further explained in the next three paragraphs.

Melinda in Speak suffers during her freshman year of high school, when she gets raped by a senior at her school. She is terrified of telling anyone and whishes it never happened, as seen in the book "Anything to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head too?" (Anderson, 165). In The Odyssey Odysseus had been trapped on Calypso's island for years, and was forced to lay with Calypso, as seen in the reading, "Though he fought shy of her and her desire, he lay with her each night, for she compelled him." (Homer.5.50-51). Both Melinda and Odysseus are being forced to do something they don't want to against their will, and it leads to great suffering, for Odysseus begins to miss his wife very much, and feels guilty because of what he has done, and Melinda feels like everyone hates her and wishes her gone because she called the police at the party, but then got to scared to actually explain