Odysseus And Anne Frank As A Hero In Homer's Odyssey
1108 Words5 Pages
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself” answered the esteemed author and mythologist Joseph Campbell in his documentary The Power of Myth. Heroes often have to perform exceptionally elevated deeds for the common good, as Campbell so eloquently stated. Heroes frequently appear in countless numbers of forms. There are the typical famous superheroes that might first come to your mind, but there are also heroes in ordinary life. These everyday heroes are people such as firemen, paramedics, and others you stroll past periodically. One hero is the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus. Odysseus performs many acute heroic deeds on his way home to Ithaca from the Trojan War. Anne Frank is another immensely…show more content… Odysseus gave up his option to settle down with a family for the sake of his country. He “weathered many bitter nights and days in his deep heart at sea” (Bk 1 Ln 8-9). Instead of having a quiet life at home with his son and wife, he was living a gruesome life at war and sea for years. He abandoned having one of the greatest pleasures of life, raising a child, so he could serve his country and protect the ones that he loved. This grand amount of sacrifice is something only a true hero could do. Frank also sacrificed a great portion of her life for the wellbeing of herself and her family. She hid with her loved ones so that injury, or even perhaps death, wouldn’t befall them from the chaos of the Nazis. When she hid from the world for all of those years, she gave up the joys of having a typical teenage life. She never was able to finish her formal schooling, or socialize with her peers. She lived, in contrast with an ordinary teenage life before the war, a rather drab and uneventful life. She forfeited the joys of her teenage life purely for the safety of those she loved. Her sacrifice is only truly capable of a great hero. When you make grand sacrifices like these, you often have less to work with, thus requiring you to be resourceful with what you do…show more content… When Odysseus questions the witch goddess Circe about how to defeat the monster Scylla instead of simply outrunning her, he is met with responses questioning his motives. She asks him “Must you battle in your heart forever? The bloody toil of combat?” (Bk 12 Ln 76-77). Odysseus is not content without violence, and must always battle to fulfill his desire, as shown here with his need to battle Scylla. He has a very aggressive and brutal demeanor about him, not desiring peace, but instead savage warfare. Anne Frank has a severely contrasting demeanor, insisting peace instead of war. Frank writes that she hopes “peace and tranquility will return again”. She simply wants the war to end, and for life to go on in a more loving and considerate way. Even though they differ in their demeanors, with Odysseus insisting violence and Frank with peace, they are still mostly