Reading this passage gave me a warm and joyful feeling. The reason the passage evoked a happy feeling from me was because from reading this passage and the rest of this section, it is easy to conclude that Telemachos has not had a fatherly influence throughout his life because his father has been absent since he was a baby, and I loved that he finally received some form of patriarchal encouragement and instruction from Mentes. The fact that Mentes--someone who bears little connection to Telemachos--believes that Telemachos is the right person to bring his father home to Ithaka was almost heartwarming to me. It made me ecstatic that Mentes clearly sees potential in Telemachos since he probably has not had any kind of patriarchal figure in his life since his father left. …show more content…
As soon as I read “my mouth suddenly dry” in paragraph 4 of page 29, I knew Telemachos was far from happy. According to DiMatteo (2006), emotional stress and anxiety can cause xerostomia, or dry mouth syndrome. Telemachos is clearly sensitive in some way, shape, or form to the sound of his father being mentioned as he experiences this temporary emotion-induced dry mouth syndrome before Mentes even begins to give Telemachos the task of finding his father. He also clearly harbors some anger and/or confusion toward his father when he mentions that he and Mentes both wonder why Odysseus wouldn’t just come home of his own free will. (However, this also goes to show that Mentes truly believes in Telemachos since he is nonetheless giving Telemachos this assignment even though he knows it would make more sense for Odysseus to return to Ithaka on his