Premium Essay

What Does The Journey Shape In The Odyssey

Submitted By
Words 523
Pages 3
The Journey Shapes Who We Are

Odysseus sets out for Ithaka thinking he is invincible after just defeating the Trojans. But as he journeys home disaster after disaster hit Odysseus and his crew. The journey is important to “The Odyssey” more than the goal. This is because the journey helps develop Odysseus’ humanity. It helps shape the epic theme that we are the ones who bring along the monsters and trial we face. Without the journey Odysseus could never have made it to Ithaka. Odysseus at the beginning of his journey is arrogant and prideful. He taunts the cyclops, Polyphemus, and as a result he is cursed never to return home. He is in agony while tied to the mast of his ship unable to act on the temptation to go to the sirens. He finds himself stranded on the ocean alone after Scylla and Charybdis attack and his whole crew is killed. Being trapped on Calypso’s …show more content…
The reason Odysseus has so much trouble getting home is because of his boastfulness. He laughs at and taunts Polyphemus, the Cyclopes, for being bested by a human. Odysseus authors his own demise by being boastful. “Laistrygonians and Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul.” This excerpt from “Ithaka” tells that monsters are brought by people. We cause our own problems much like Odysseus did. The journey is more important to Odysseus than the goal because without the journey there can be no goal. The journey helped Odysseus grow as a person to be the best he could be. The goal helps one get through the journey but at the end the goal has nothing left to give. The journey is always looked at badly for being so hard and dangerous, but after the goal is reached and the journey is thought about only then can the journey really be appreciated. The journey is what allows one to gain knowledge and experience one needs to reach the goals in

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Odyssey Research Paper

...Essay Outline: The Hero’s Journey. Directions: Use your completed close-reading charts on “The Hero’s Adventure” and “The Hero’s Journey,” as well as your annotations from “The Odyssey” to complete this outline for your research simulation essay. 10 point classwork grade Introduction Hook Statement - Engage the reader with a compelling quote or question related to the topic How does the Hero’s journey structure contribute to the development of Odysseus’ character as an epic hero and aligns with his journey? Background Information - Provide necessary context about the topic and its significance In the Odyssey, Odysseus goes through many phases/challenges of which align with the “stages” in the Hero’s Journey. These...

Words: 1060 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Telemachus's Journey In Odysseus Ithaka

...The Odyssey by Homer and the poem “Ithaka” by C.F. Cavafy depict a magical journey full of surprises representing the ruling importance of the journey over the destination. In these two writings, the destination is Ithaka, a beautiful island located in Greece. However, the journey is the one who increases the value and beautifulness of Ithaka in Odysseus’ eyes. In The Odyssey, both Telemachus and Odysseus embark on an expedition which shape their character and views of the world. Ithaka was only their destination; the journey magically transformed Odysseus and Telemachus. Expeditions shape heroes, change their perspectives of the world, and increase their self-esteem. For instance, Telemachus’s voyage increased his maturity; he turned into...

Words: 745 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Argumentative Essay On Homer's The Odyssey

...Odyssey Argumentative Essay As Christopher Columbus once said, "By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination." The journey, and how those obstacles and distractions are overcome, is what holds the valuable life lessons that help us reach the destination. Ultimately, it is not the overall goal, but the decisions we make and the turns we take during the journey that help shape and define who we are as people. In Homer's The Odyssey, the theme of the epic is about how war can change a person. It is evident that the journey is more important than the goal to the development of Odysseus's character and the theme of the epic when Odysseus learns the importance of humility, the value...

Words: 980 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Relationships In The Odyssey

...Love comes in many different shapes and sizes. Their is no doubt that a good story like The Odyssey by Homer includes the major emotional theme of love. The idea of love is emphasized throughout The Odyssey in a variety of different ways: Romantic love, familial love, and love within a helping hand of someone. These types of love all come together in perfect harmony to make The Odyssey the amazing story that it is. In life we often look and search for someone to share the love and journey with. Odysseus and Penelope’s strong and powerful relationship was no different when it came to a pure representation of love. Their relationship stayed strong throughout all the hardships they both faced. Odysseus was gone on a journey for over two decades,...

Words: 1246 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Apollo 13 Essay

...Apollo 13 Cinematic Analysis Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard is the heartbreaking true story of the Apollo 13 crew on their journey to Mars. The film teaches the viewers the theme that everyone must make the best of what they get and adapt to an ever changing environment. The movie starts by introducing the 3 members of the Apollo 13 mission.The members are Jim Lovell as mission commander, Jack Swigert the backup command module pilot, and Fred Haise the lunar module pilot. Lovell’s team gets a surprise call up to man the mission as the original astronauts catch the measles. From there on the crew is preparing for the Apollo 13 mission to the moon. On April 11 the spacecraft takes off on its long journey to the moon and everything appears...

Words: 437 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Similarities Between The Odyssey And The Aeneid

...Greeks. Virgil uses the work of Homer, and constructs parallel situations from The Odyssey, in order to show the differences between Roman characteristics and Greek characteristics. The main character of each book, Aeneas from The Aeneid, and Odysseus from The Odyssey, both represent the...

Words: 1073 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

A Hero's Journey

...A Hero’s Journey Joseph Campbell describes the 17 stages that occur during a hero’s journey, also known as Monomyth. The Odyssey by Homer is a story based on Ulysses and his journey, I will be describing the stages of Monomyth based on Campbell’s ideas. These stages will focus on Ulysses and his son Telemachus. According to Joseph Campbell, a hero’s journey normally entails three phases; the departure, the initiation, and the return. (Wikipedia) The first phase is the departure phase, which consists of three stages; the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, and supernatural aid. The call to adventure, is when the hero is in a “mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.” (Wikipedia) Ulysses call to adventure began when he accepted to lead his men and go to troy and fight against King Priam. This is considered an adventure because it was something different, it took him away to the unknown, and it tested his courage. This was also Ulysses’ first step into the start of his journey. The second stage is refusal of the call, this happens when the hero does not want to go on the journey. Ulysses was in Ithica with his wife and newborn son, when he got the call to go to Troy. Ulysses did not want to leave his son behind or wife but had no choice, this could be seen as him refusing to go to Troy. The third stage is receiving supernatural aid, one of the examples of this stage is when Miverva appears...

Words: 1768 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Wsu Eng Comp 1

...Better With Music Western Governor’s University Life Is Better With Music Learning to play a musical instrument is a lifelong journey with benefits that begin from the very first day you touch the instrument. The courage to try something new is the first psychological win in a string of confidence builders that continually help to shape your personality and foster growth. The subsequent and on-going health benefits derived while honing your craft provides further proof that playing a musical instrument is an instrumental decision in your life. The art of music is in the mechanics of mastering an instrument, of discovering and creating new music, of challenging yourself and feeling the satisfaction of accomplishment in learning or writing a new piece. Mass media will portend that musical performance is the art. While entertaining for many, artists, famous and otherwise, will tell you that the performance is the payoff. The art is in learning, refining, and creating, which typically happens in unspectacular private places far away from notoriety. There is a personal space between you and your instrument where only you live and where you have full control over what you do, where there is no interference. That space is where art is born and where the benefits of playing affect your life and where we will focus this discussion. My musical odyssey began at age eleven in the sixth grade school band with percussion. While challenging at first and awkward, I realized early on...

Words: 910 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Re: Greek Mythology

...GREEK MYTHOLOGY Background to Homer’s Odyssey As you read each story, ask yourself: What is most enjoyable, predictable, or bizarre about this story? How would I have responded in this situation? What mysteries or features of the world might this story try to explain? What bit of moral or religious instructions (i.e. don’t disobey the gods) might be contained in this story? How does this story compare with Christian beliefs, or with the values of our culture today? Are there any other stories or fables I’ve heard that follow the same pattern as this story? The Creation Myths Part 1 Before there was anything, there was Chaos, a formless void. This void, this pure nothingness, gave birth to Gaea (the Earth itself), Tartarus (the underworld), Eros (love), Erebus (underground darkness) and Nyx (the darkness of night). The two kinds of darkness joined together and gave birth two kinds of light: the Light of the heavens and the Light of day. Nyx (night) also gave birth to the three Fates, who control the course of the universe and determine the length of each person’s life on their wheel of fortune. Of the fates, Clotho spins the threads of each person’s life, Lachesis measures the length of the thread, and Atropos cuts the thread. The Fates – Francisco Goya (one of the best painters ever!) 1823 – Note the scissors in the hand of Atropos and Lachesis measuring with a magnifying glass. Who’s...

Words: 10610 - Pages: 43

Free Essay

Unifying Manifesto

...PREFACE Adam Jefferson, a divine manifest of Adam Smith's materialism and Thomas Jefferson's idealism, is our troubled modern day hero. He awoke in the middle of his life - broke and lost. A serial entrepreneur, his life was a never-ending quest for material success. At age 38, as Joseph Campbell forewarned humanity, Adam had "climbed the ladder of success, only to realize it was propped up against the wrong wall." Alone, with nothing else to lose, Adam Jefferson climbed down off of the ladder and searched for the wall of his future. This led him on a 100-day odyssey to start the ascent of his new life, an epic journey which called him across the world discussing today's challenges and opportunities with the great minds of our past - Carl Jung, Mary Parker-Follett, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and many others. An act of their collective genius and magical combustion, a psychological and sociological theory for sustainability and success was formed. Like all heroic quests, Adam ended where he had begun. Prior to his expedition, Adam had an unforgettable encounter with one of the great minds of the 20th century. One freezing, early morning on January 17, 2009, Adam Jefferson met the famed Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They walked the beach in Winthrop for hours, discussing morality and the questions one ponders in the solitude of despair. They exchange woes - "You tell me yours, and I will tell you mine."...

Words: 3294 - Pages: 14

Free Essay

Omeros: the River of Ancestry and the Importance of Idenitty

...Omeros: The River of Ancestry and the Importance of Identity What defines a location, a place in space? Is it those who are there or those who have been there? Is it the life this position exudes or the life that is being suppressed? How does one define what is in front of them? How does one differentiate between the history of a place, the lives – the feelings, everyday happenings of the people – and the History of the place, that is to say the history that is imposed on the people? This is a problem when discussing places that have been colonized. The history of the people is assumed to be the History – the histories of the colonizers. The lives of the colonizers are projected onto the colonized – their religion, their rites, their businesses. The actual lives of the people are forgotten . The lives of the ingenious people are forgotten. And in places where slavery and indentured servitude was a practice, the original and true histories of those people are forgotten. This is a phenomenon that West Indian author and poet Derek Walcott addresses in his insightful and touched the Nobel Prize Lecture delivered after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. He begins his lecture describing a performance that takes place on the island of Trinidad, every year by the East Indian population of the town Felicity. The performance is a dramatization of the Hindu epic Ramayana, a major representation of their original history and presentation of their identities....

Words: 3950 - Pages: 16

Free Essay

Homer

...was one person, was born between 850 and 1100 BCE) was, to use a modern term, the source code for Greek literature and poetry, and therefore for Western literature, heavily influencing practically everyone who followed him, including, of course, the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri ( 1265-1321 A.D.). Both poets’ visions of Hell, as depicted in The Odyssey and Inferno, are noteworthy because they open important windows into the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the worlds into which these authors were born. Why is this important? Because their elaborately drawn visions of Hell represent the two great divides in how humans for 3,000 years have been seeing themselves and the universe they perceive surrounding them. In the Homeric vision, life is tragic and arbitrary. We as humans are mere playthings of the Fates and the gods. Sometimes justice occurs, but usually only by accident, and even then it comes wrapped up in irony. Good is punished and evil triumphs. The hero, instead of enjoying the fruits of his victory, is brought low by some tragic flaw. Homer’s portrayal of the gods and of hell in the Odyssey…[big long quote] For Dante, in sharp contrast, the universe is ordered and just. The wicked are, eventually, punished and the righteous are rewarded, if not in this life, then in the next. Existence, while often painful and scary, is not arbitrary, but proceeds according to a mysterious divine plan devised long ago by an eternally all-knowing, loving...

Words: 3218 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Flight Sherman Alexie Analysis

...be called speculative fiction with a heavy dose of history and historical elements. In this narrative of Zits’ story, the author makes the protagonist jump into different historical identities. Zits does this as he travels through time and revisits history. Zits understanding of violence changes as he travels through these different...

Words: 1924 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Broken Family

...The Apple of Discord The gods had gathered at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of Achilles. However, Eris, the goddess of discord, was stopped at the door, since nobody wanted disharmony on the merry occasion. Eris was angered, and threw away her gift, which was an apple having the words Ti Kallisti (To The Fairest) inscribed on it. This apple became a source of conflict between three goddesses: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Top The Judgment Each of them felt they deserved the apple and since Hera had been turned away, they had no way of finding out the intended recipient of the gift. None of the gods wanted to judge, because choosing one would invite the wrath of the other two. Finally, the conflict took them to Hermes, who led them to Paris, who was a prince of Troy. The three goddesses appeared naked to Paris, but he was still unable to judge them. Then they tried to influence him by offering him bribes; Hera offered him control of Asia Minor (Anatolia) and political power, Athena offered him the abilities of the greatest warriors, skill in battle and wisdom, while Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta (who came to be known as Helen of Troy when she eloped with Prince Paris). Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, not knowing that Helen was already married to Menelaus, king of Sparta. Top Elopement of Paris and Helen Source: Francesco Primaticcio (artist), via Wikimedia Commons (PD) As part...

Words: 2580 - Pages: 11

Premium Essay

#Popepular

...consider play an unworthy activity for adults, he seemed to suggest that intellectual play in some form, as demonstrated in the dialectical banter of Socrates, could provide a stimulus to understanding. Key words: education in ancient Greece; play and child development; play and education; play and Plato; Socratic dialectic Among various plausible misquotations that surface from time to time is a piece of popular wisdom attributed to Plato to the effect that “you can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” It was quoted by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in 2009, who took it from a popular American cookbook; the ultimate source may be a seventeenth-century treatise on etiquette by one Richard Lindgard (who does not attribute the quote to Plato). While the great philosopher’s ideas on play were by his own reckoning groundbreaking for his time, his writings offer no indication that he would have entertained this particular notion. His...

Words: 6335 - Pages: 26