Odysseuss Odyssey: The Narrative of Voyage, Culture, and Marriage - Term Paper Example

Odysseus’s Odyssey: The Narrative of Voyage, Culture, and Marriage Introduction Odysseus, at the finale of Book 5, prepares to set off from Calypso and go back home finally. As soon as the construction of the boat was done, Calypso gives him supplies for his voyage and bids a good wind to help him on his journey. Odysseus afterward heads out to seize the breeze and positions himself skillfully at the wheel of his new boat. This paper analyzes the three major themes of Odyssey, namely, Odysseus’s boat, Odysseus as the new epic hero of the new world, and Odysseus’s matrimonial bed. These themes show how Odysseus’s travels are poetic in nature and how he shifts into a wanderer into a domesticated spouse. The intervening theme, which is Odysseus as a new epic hero, is discussed in order to prove how Odysseus contributes to the cultural imagination and knowledge of ancient Greece. The Boat of Poetry, the Cultural Narrative, and the Marriage Bed At first everything goes smoothly, and Odysseus effectively crosses the sea for several weeks. On the last day of his navigation, though, while he sees the Phaeacians Island emerging from the sea, Poseidon secretly follows Odysseus journey towards home. Filled with anger, Poseidon swore against this change of occurrences and creates a powerful storm meant to destroy Odysseus and his boat (Maynard 183): So speaking he gathered together the clouds and stirred up the sea, taking his trident in his hands. He roused up all the storms of all kinds of winds, and he hid the land and the sea equally with clouds. And night arose from the sky. Odysseus was frightened at the roaring storm and grieves at the possibility of dying alone and desolately at the open sea. His comrades at Troy were far more fortunate to die honorably on the theater of war. Unsurprisingly, when the storm struck, the boat of Odysseus starts to crumble (Maynard 185): As he spoke a great wave rushed terribly down upon him from up high and spun the raft around. He himself fell far from the raft and lost the rudder from his hands. A terrible storm of winds mixing together arrived and broke the mast in the middle, and the sail and the upper deck fell into the water far away. At this moment, Leucothea, the sea goddess, arrives and creates a magic shawl for Odysseus that will rescue him from the storm if he decides to leave his boat and just swim. Doubtful at first, Odysseus promises to remain in his boat as long as it holds up, but Poseidon quickly creates a big wave that destroys the boat. Odysseus then decides to leave his boat and is able to swim onto the dry land of the Phaeacians Island, where he conceals himself under a bush and falls asleep. The boat of Odysseus—the boat that he built with the godly support of Calypso, the boat that symbolizes the lyrical elements with all its useful capabilities to navigate— was destroyed in a matter of days and only several lines. What is the explanation for this? If the boat of Odysseus is to symbolize the lyrical components in the poem, why does it fall apart almost immediately? What is its message regarding the lasting impact of poetry? A specific way to analyze this obvious inconsistency is to view the momentary aspect of the boat’s existence as symbolic of the uncertain and adaptable feature of poetry. The various elements and subjects of a lyrical work are organized to complement a specific listener and setting but do not have to stay continuously set in that structure. Similar to the different parts of Odysseus’s boat, the various subjects or elements of a melody can be broken up and reorganized to produce new melodies for new settings. Nevertheless, another approach to this issue is to place emphasis on the narrative outcome of Odysseus’s boat wreckage, specifically, the creation of his voyage stories, for his smashup picks the suitable listener and setting for singing the melodies that have become the portrayal of the heart of the Odyssey—his stories of voyage and conspiracy. The destruction of Odysseus’s boat, with all its lyrical connections, is hence counteracted in the narrative by the concrete descriptions that he gives. Finally home. After a decade of combat at Troy and another decade at the open sea, Odysseus has finally come home. In his voyages he has stumbled upon Golden Age sceneries, vicious storms, cannibalistic creatures, and sensual fairies. He has travelled to Hades and came back, endured the Sirens’ song, and turned down offers of immortal existence. He has constructed a boat and lost it. Yet, despite everything, despite the unspeakable incidents, despite the misery, he has returned home; indeed, his voyages are exactly what have allowed Odysseus to come home at last. Odysseus has successfully regained his Greek identity through his voyages mainly. Basically, he contributes to the building of a new essence of Greek uniqueness through his experiences with the natives and lands abroad. The previous section discussed how the boat of Odysseus works as a medium for expressing the poem’s cultural aspects. The boat-- with its thorough creation, its capacity to carry loads, and its capacity to travel—operates as a symbol of the complex interrelatedness between narrative, voyage, and commerce in the Odyssey. It both symbolizes the promise of cultural thought and carries Odysseus to the place of his New World stories. With scenery that is part of the Golden Age customs and the New World narratives, Phaeacia provides a perfect place for cultural thoughts. The essence of the cultural narrative travels the world in order to make sense or appreciate much better the world at home. At this point, it is important to analyze the themes of homecoming. Interestingly, the expanded voyage story that Odysseus narrates to the Phaeacians before going back to Ithaca is exactly what allows his homecoming. The order of the narrative of Odysseus gives him a perspective for analyzing his homecoming, and its cultural thought contributes to the creation of a new responsibility for Ithaca’s king and a new world for Ithaca itself. Common themes from his experiences with the Cyclopes and Phaeacians reemerge in the poem’s latter half to describe vengeful acts of Odysseus against the suitors and his reunification with Penelope. This section of the paper focuses on how the connection between his journeys and home re-creates the return of Odysseus to Ithaca as a form of colonial basis. Furthermore, the Odysseus who came home is not the Odysseus who left Ithaca two decades earlier. Due to his journeys and experiences, Odysseus himself becomes a symbol of a new hero for the ancient times. Alongside his character as traveler, merchant, and poet, the role of Odysseus as colonial creator conveys a heroic framework that stresses change and instability rather than permanence and protection of the status quo. The journeys of Odysseus expose him to the brave new worlds of colonialism. Even though he never really establishes a colony in his voyages, Odysseys travels all over; he finds out new lands and encounters natives, and his experiences among the Cyclopes and Phaeacians exercise major techniques and themes of colonial dialogue to envision the positive and negative aspects of the colonial experience. Nonetheless, it is not until he goes back to Ithaca that the colonial aspect of the voyages and encounters of Odysseus is completely understood. In arriving at unknown lands, slaughtering the dangerous male suitors who inhabit his territory, and afterward remarrying the native empress Penelope, he basically reestablishes Ithaca. Through his ‘colonial’ encounters with the Phaeacians and Cyclopes, Odysseus changes mythological prewar Ithaca and transfers it in ancient Greece’s New World. As soon as Odysseus at last returns to Ithaca, it is as though he were setting foot once more on unknown lands. Indeed, his coming is introduced by the form of portrayal that introduces several of the experiences of Odysseus overseas. The poet gives a detailed description of Ithaca’s harbor and the Nymphs’ cave, with its temple filled with offerings, as though this place, as well, were unfamiliar to Odysseus. Indeed, Athena has transformed the scenery to become unfamiliar to Odysseus, and as a result she has changed it into an ‘other’ territory. Frustrated, Odysseus cries: “Oh, my, I have come to the land of what sort of men now? Are they savage and wild and unjust, or are they kind to strangers and respectful of the gods?” (Maynard 220) In guessing whether the inhabitants of this new land were savages or cultured and enlightened, Odysseus raises the same question that he had upon arriving at Phaeacia. Ithaca is also a bizarre new place and embodies all the possible risks and advantages of the New World. Indeed, when Athena, masked as a young shepherd, portrays the Ithacan scenery to a puzzled and exasperated Odysseus, she changes the description of the landscape into something very similar to the territory of the Cyclopes and the perfect neighboring colonial land (Maynard 228): Indeed it is a rough country and not good for raising horses; nor is it exceedingly worthless although it has not been fashioned a broad land. For there is unlimited grain here, and grapes for wine grow, and there is continuous rainfall and copious dew. And it is a good land for raising goats and cattle. There are woods everywhere, and watering places are present year round. The remark about Ithaca’s massive supply of grain evokes the barley and wheat that grow easily and naturally in the Cyclopes’ territory. Athena’s portrayal of Ithaca also recalls the land facing the territory of the Cyclopes. Both places are full of trees and goats, and abundance of water. At that moment, the Ithaca that Odysseus stumbles upon in Book 13 acquires a lot of the features of the new worlds of his adventures—an unknown territory that has the potential of being hospitable or unfriendly. In his adventures, Odysseus sees new peoples and new places, some accommodating, others unfriendly and threatening, and at each experience he tries to guess what kind of inhabitants he will encounter. Are they aggressive and inhumane, or are they religious and civilized? What differentiates Odysseus from other mythological adventurers in the Greek folklore is this interest in the new worlds and his oratorical ability at translating his experiences abroad into intricate and graceful lyrics. In such regard, Odysseus not merely encounters the New World, but also thinks about these experiences and narrates them to the people at home. The character of Odysseus as wandering poet recognizes the possibility and flexibility of poetic certainty; it indicates the intangible truth principles of the cultural imagination as well. Odysseus’s story is a chronicle of the ‘other’—women who transform men into pigs, Golden Age sceneries, and cannibalistic monsters. Furthermore, the tales of Odysseus seek meaning and value for the Greek identity in this realm of eccentricity and uncertainty. The Odyssey envisions a home for Greeks abroad, it wonders about new ways of interaction and essence, and especially, it rejoices the influence and capability of narrative to expresses these new traditions and lifestyles in a world of instability and disorder. The character of Odysseus as re-creator of his homeland—Ithaca—is hence a piece of the larger image wherein he embodies a new type of hero for an unstable and transforming culture. Numerous academics have commented about the classical image of Odysseus as mythic hero. His adventures—the failures he encounters, the dangers he avoids, the understanding and knowledge he acquires—and his triumphant homecoming have become a representation, as one scholar describes it, “a return to humanity in the broadest sense” (Bloom 104). Nevertheless, this exemplary human being is not ‘everyman’; he possesses unique traits and features— features that have enabled his successful return. For instance, Odysseus is different from Achilles; his popularity is rooted less in his military exploits and physical power than in his ability, ingenuity, and intelligence. When he at last describes himself to Alcinous in Book 9, Odysseus proudly claims that he surpasses all in deception and manipulation, not aggression. Most of all Odysseus is a person of ‘many ways’ and the abundance of lines in this description are symbolic of the diversity innate in Odysseus (Bloom 112). He has travelled far and wide; his mind is convoluted. His mythic abilities to survive are brought about mainly by his eagerness to adapt and survive, even to endure obscurity or insignificance if needed. Not like Achilles, who is a victim of the Trojan War and its consequences—Odysseus endures, and the Odyssey narrates the tale of his endurance. In such regard, Odysseus embodies a new form of Greek mythic hero—a con artist, a multidimensional man—and scholars have commented on how the Odyssey seems to rival or react to the Iliad with a heroic image of its own. However, the aspects of Odysseus’s character as a new hero go beyond themes of literary characterization, style, and form and into the evolving and unconventional realm of ancient Greece. In embodying the soul of the colonial period, as well as advances in commerce and in the creation and dissemination of poetry, Odysseus is a new epic protagonist for a new world—the ancient world—and the tale of his numerous journeys and survival creates a new heroic example for a culture also going with the flow of change and civilization. Rather than a hero who fiercely stands for and protects his traditional customs and lifestyle, Odysseus characterizes the promises and risks of travel. Meanwhile, the creation of the matrimonial bed of Odysseus and Penelope, as depicted in Book 23, provides a motif of the Odyssey’s narrative, a narrative that was previously wandering, like the boat of Odysseus, but which at this point, in its finale, has settled down. The story of the building of the boat of Odysseus underlines the perfect woodworking methods. Also, the passage highlights the building process by means of repeating the term ‘making’ and stressing the expertise and skills required. These are the same expertise that an oral poet should possess. Odysseus’s boat is poetic in nature, its building reflecting the process of poetry-making and its capacity to carry loads embodying themes of poetic significance. However, specifically, it is the capacity of the boat to travel that is the most important here. The boat of Odysseus provides him the chance and expression to sing his own melody, and its capacity to travel predicts the character of Odysseus’s narrative to unfold—a melody of journey, a melody that travels. However, at the end, Odysseus builds a stationary bed instead of a mobile boat. The destruction of the boat of Odysseus, the medium of his escape from the island of Calypso and the representation of his narrative abilities and influence, has now been salvaged and re-created exactly to conclude the narrative. However, instead of a sign of the freedom of movement and flexibility of the narrative under way, this immobile bed sums up a narrative that is done, similar to Odysseus himself. Conclusions Odysseus contributes significantly to the expansion of the Greek worldview and knowledge of other peoples and places. He tries to establish a home for the Greeks in the New World as a colonist, and as a merchant he builds a web of valuable connection and relationships. Ultimately, as poet he narrates his experiences overseas at home, and through his stories, he encourages the Greeks to envision a New World in their own land. Odysseus, the new epic hero of the new world, voyages outside the limits of traditional Greek experience and comes back home to his beautiful and loyal bride. The experiences of Odysseus—his perilous and informative travel overseas and his triumphant homecoming to a compatible marital union—provides ancient Greeks an example for the effective and fruitful assimilation of the world overseas, with all its risks and its gains, at home. As the boat of Odysseus, the tool for his voyages and the symbol of their narrative is ultimately converted into his matrimonial bed, the wandering Odysseus is settled down, and the cultural thoughts of ancient Greece settles in the New World. Work Cited Bloom, Harold. The Odyssey. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print. Maynard, Mack. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. New York: W.W. Norton & Co Inc., 1997. Print. Read More