Loyal To Odysseus As Her Husband example essay topic

Gentle waves lap against the Ithacan shore line as Odysseus has finally reached his native homeland. Rumors of the great turmoil that has rocked Odysseus' home land and house has reached him abroad. After hearing the news, he decides to don a beggar's disguise and so forth begins the great test. When the disguised Odysseus in Homer's great epic poem, The Odyssey, converses with her wife Penelope in Book nineteen, he tests her loyalty to her husband's honor and her love of her missing husband. Odysseus disguised as a beggar is the basis for the lies that are going to be told to Penelope in this passage by him.

In my opinion, this is the main lie that is used as the building block for many other lies to be told. Odysseus is being deceitful by disguising himself as a beggar for specific reasons. His reasons are to find out what has been going on in Ithaca in his twenty years' absence. He wants to find out his wife's loyalty to him as the husband and the authority figure, and her love to her husband. If she did not still love him, he might think twice about revealing his identity to his wife and to the island of Ithaca.

He wants to get a feeling of how Penelope feels towards him before he reveals himself to her. The beggar assures Penelope that he has really spent some time with her husband in Am nisus because there was a terrible storm and, 'Then on the thirteenth day the wind died down and they set sail for Troy (Homer 397, 19.233-234). ' ; There are two statements that reassure Penelope that the beggar does know Odysseus. 'So I took Odysseus back to my own house, gave him a hero's welcome, treated him in style... ' ; (Homer 396, 19.222-223) and 'A dozen days they stayed with me there... (Homer 397, 19.228-229).

' ; By giving Penelope this information about her husband, it gives her hope that he is still alive and on his way home. Now comes the part where he puts Penelope to the test. By sharing this information with her about her husband he comes to understand her feelings for him. Penelope has not only been loyal to Odysseus as her husband, but also as the authority figure. She has demonstrated her loyalty by being true to him for twenty years in his absence and has not remarried. Penelope is trying to put it off as long as she can, but the suitors are getting hostile and tired of waiting.

So she tells them the one who can string the bow like Odysseus she will in turn marry them. This task is so difficult that if any one can do it she knows she has picked the strongest and best suitor to led Ithaca. By her making them perform this impossible task she is in another way showing her love and loyalty to Odysseus. In other words, Penelope is professing that she wants her husband back. Another reason she has not remarried was for the well being of Ithaca, because by picking a bad leader Ithaca could have self-destructed right before her own eyes. The way she demonstrates her love for her husband while he is gone is that every night before she goes to bed she weaves a web on her loom to remind herself of Odysseus and how much he means to her.

Odysseus, who has been observing that Penelope is still in love with him and was loyal to him, decides to reward her for her two fold loyalty. By Penelope loving him and being loyal, he plots against the suitors seeking for sweet revenge. Odysseus kills every last one of the suitors, who have caused so much distress in Peneolpe's and Telemachus' lives. After his accomplishment of killing the suitors, he tells the nurse to go let the queen know that her king is now home for good. They spent the whole night lying in bed talking about all they had missed in each other's life and sleep never crossed their minds until all was told. Anti nous, a suitor, was telling Agamemnon of how they were defeated and killed by Odysseus trying to get sympathy from him.

Agamemnon could not give the suitors any sympathy because of previous events that have happened to him. He had great feelings on this matter because his wife whom he had married had murdered him. Agamemnon's ghost highly rejoices when he hears of Odysseus' revenge with the suitors. He agrees to how Odysseus ended the lives of the suitors to regain his wife's love back after all these years that he was gone. -

Bibliography

-Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fables; Intro. Bernard Knox. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.