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Selected Themes in Homer's Odyssey

The purpose of this research is to examine selected themes in Homer's Odyssey. The plan of the research will be to set forth the pattern of ideas and events in The Odyssey in general terms and then to discuss how the poem treats the idea of justice, the question of identity revelation and testing, the notions of hospitality and inhospitality, the roles of the gods in the work, the portrayals of women, and the means by which epic similes emerge in the work.

The action of The Odyssey involves the wanderings of Odysseus, who travels by an extremely indirect route back to home and hearth where his faithful and patient wife Penelope awaits him and where he kills all the suitors who have been courting her in his absence. The journey takes twenty years because Odysseus is repeatedly thrown off course, wandering the Mediterranean area in a series of extraordinary adventures. The content of those adventures, which appear to digress from Odysseus's principal objective, is the content of ideas contained in the work, as either understood or enacted by Odysseus.

Book I decisively establishes the range of human choices and dilemmas, both ethical and cultural, that permeate the entire work. This is important because it serves as an introduction to means by which multiple conflicts have to be resolved in the course of the narrative. Odysseus has a comrade in a portion of his travels, notably his grown son Telemachus, who has attempted without success to drive Penelope's suitors away (I.32-35) and then sets sail in search of his father and in hope of finding a way to permanently drive the suitors from Penelope's door (II.41-2). To be sure, the focus of most of The Odyssey is on Odysseus. But as Porter points out (6), the first four books of the poem are devoted not to Odysseus but rather to a convocation of the gods, who explain that Odysseus has been prevented from finding his way home because he has blinded "god-like Polyphemus," a son of the s...

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Selected Themes in Homer's Odyssey. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:22, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708907.html