Another character who has a fragmented hero’s journey is Odysseus from The Odyssey. Odysseus is the hero in this story despite his flaws, and his hero’s journey is his road back home where “home” is the elixir. His hero’s journey follows the guidelines well, missing steps or ghosting over some. The first steps starting with Ordinary world and ending with crossing the threshold are substituted for Odysseus’s fight in the Trojan war that lasts ten years. Because he was taken from his ordinary world to fight without protest, the story glances over these few steps, picking up at step 6. In other words, his journey starts with an Ordinary world but doesn’t engage with steps two through 5; therefore, his journey follows only part of the guidelines …show more content…
His road back home is where he faces the rest of the steps. During the road back home, Odysseus faces tests and enemies which include the encounters with a cyclops, sirens, and many other creatures. The encounter with the cyclops damaged ships and killed men on his journey back home, as did the sirens, with killing men. However, Odysseus still makes his way to his elixir, in which he encounters the step of the ordeal. This takes place when the rest of his men and ships are struck down after the encounter with the sirens and before the island of Ogygia. Here he is left alone drifting in the sea on parts of the ship, “And now the west wind ceased to blow a gale; but soon the south wind came and brought me anguish that I must measure back my way to fell Charybdis. All night I drifted on, and with the sunrise I came to Scylla’s crag and dire Charybdis,” (121). Here he’s up against Scylla and Charybdis, where he’s standing on his toes to survive. This is the ordeal he’s faced with because this is where he loses all that he started with, all the men and ships are gone, nearing the end of his journey, with little to hold on. He even drifts alone at seas for 9 days and ends up landing on the shores of Ogygia, in which the people take pity on his misfortunes. However, the ordeal isn’t a major one but one of the last ones that shows how much it costs to the end of his journey to get …show more content…
His son has finally learned that he is alive but his wife still doesn’t know. Thus, his “elixir” is yet to be completed. Since he has reached home and has reunited with his son, he still needs to reunite with his wife to complete this step of achieving his award. And as stated before, the road back has occurred earlier and is still occurring within his hero’s journey as he’s getting closer to achieve the full award. While reuniting with his wife, Odysseus then faces the step of resurrection. However, he ghosts over some of the key points that make up this step in which, “there is often a replay here of the mock death-and-rebirth of Stage 8, as the hero once again faces death and survives,” (Ortiz-Roberts, 5). Odysseus doesn’t face death as is portrayed by this point but rather inflicts death on all the suitors, “Odysseus too peered round his hall to see if any ling man were lurking there, seeking to shun dark doom. He found them all laid low in blood and dust…” (219). Here, he is alone, the victor even though some of the suitors tried to fight him or scare him off. This shows that rather having an event that brings him to face death yet again and survives, he instead puts himself in a situation that could have him face death if thing go awry. He ghosts over this step but he does become transformed by his journey. After all of this, he finally comes