Odysseus View Of The Gods In Homer's Odyssey

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There is quite a difference between the Biblical worldview and the worldview the ancient Greeks adopted. The book, The Odyssey, provides this worldview. Through the character Odysseus, the reader is vividly shown the life styles and views of the Greeks. To summarize the book, Odysseus recently sets home from a nearly decade long war, but first he must go through many trials. Along the way his shadowy guide, Athena, helps him conquer the evils in order to return to his family, who is in the mist of being lost. This essay is going to be discussing Odysseus’ view of the gods of the Greeks, his view of life and death, and his view of man. Odysseus’ opinions of the gods are most prominent. It is most apparent that Odysseus thinks of the gods as being vastly more powerful than any human. “Of mortal creatures, all that breathe and move, earth…show more content…
“Among them all the youngest was Elpenor...having climbed on Kirke’s roof...fell asleep...Waked with our [Odysseus’] mourning voices...started up, but missed his footing on the long steep backward ladder and fell that height headlong. The blow smashed his nape cord, and his ghost fled to the dark [Hades].” (10.609-618) When Elpenor fell he had broken his neck, and when he died, “his ghost fled to the dark.” In other words, at the moment he died, his spirit left him and went to the underworld. The book also points out that Hades, where all souls go at death, is a very dark and dreary place. “Never the flaming eye of Helios lights on those men at morning, when he climbs the sky of stars, nor in descending earthward out of heaven; ruinous night being rove over those wretches.” (11.17-21) This states that Helios, the sun, is never seen in the underworld. Quite obviously that would imply that Hades is dark. Odysseus also has a strong opinion of

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