Throughout the plot of The Odyssey, the main hero Odysseus encounters a few women on his journey home to Ithaca. He even had affairs with a couple of them. Despite caring about his wife as much as he does, Odysseus had succumbed to temptation more than once. There were three other main female characters that he encountered during the epic. He met Calypso, Circe, Athena and at the end he finally reunites with his wife Penelope. Odysseus has a different relationship with each woman and they each treat
The Iliad and the Odyssey certainly contains strong female characters, both immortals and mortals. The Greek poet’s Homer’s, (being one or a mix of different people) had creates these epic tales to show the man’s heroic quest. But with as close examination we can see that women plays a huge role in those epic tales. We can find all kind of types of women in this epic poem, there is strong-willed, the damsel-in-distress types, wicked and vengeful women. We even have the women who cause the downfall
Professor Smith explains the evolutions the Odyssey has undergone to become a written text, the significant impact that Homer had on the Romans, and a novel theme that appears throughout the Odyssey. The Odyssey has undergone numerous transitions in order to become the text that it is today. The Odyssey originated from an oral culture, meaning that messages and stories were verbally communicated in the form of speech or songs. Originally, rhapsodes would perform a group of songs and create a story
The Odyssey is an epic poem by Homer. It is a story of the journey of Odysseus coming back to his wife and son in Ithaca after being away from them for 20 years. The ancient Greeks valued strength, bravery, wit, great stories and beauty. So this tale is centred on a male who holds all of those traits. This epic tale has been an inspiration for many literary creations including Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad is a feminist approach from the point of view of Odysseus’ wife
Portrayed: The women of Ancient Greece The epic poem The Odyssey by the ancient Greek writer Homer,The Iliad, and the Odyssey movie shows us what women had to go through in the ancient Greek society. The women in the story The Odyssey were portrayed as servants to men. In Greek society, we can infer that men do not respect women as they should. They see women as a lower class. The author treats the women as less important than men in their society. The women, both human and Goddess, played a
Even though women held an entirely contrasting position in society compared to men, they help a certain sphere of influence and power and simply exerted it in ways that were distinct from men’s strategies. By examining the character of all women, specifically Penelope and Phaedra, one can see how women applied their power and influence in both epics. First I will argue how in Ancient Greece, women struggle to find a place in society. Next I will discuss how Penelope uses clever charm to mess with
The Penelopiad tells its story in a different time period from the Odyssey as it comes from Penelope looking backward through centuries from today back to the classical Greek period. I think Atwood’s intention is to highlight how attitudes towards women have changed over the centuries. She uses the pyschology of sexual abuse to explain the maid’s behaviour. “ if our owners or the sons of our owners or a visiting nobleman or the sons of a visiting nobleman wanted to sleep with us, we could not refuse
The Odyssey is a translated book and was a movies as well. The Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad; it is about how a vain king , Odysseus, was sent out to battle the same day his son was born. He had told his wife that if he shall not return she must remarry, and give the kingdom to his son once he had grown his first beard. The war that Odysseus was sent to was called the Trojan War, and this battle took 10 years to fight. With given advice from Athena, Goddess of war strategy, they had won this war
The depiction of women in the Greek poem The Odyssey shows what the Greeks thought of them and their roles in society. The same attitudes and stereotypes about women that the Greeks had still exist in modern-day cultures around the world. These stereotypes and roles include men viewing women as possessions, the only place for a women is in the home, and the superiority of men to women. In examining the Greek culture versus modern-day societies, it’s difficult to see that many similarities between
The Odyssey by Homer is a unique way to get a unique view at the life of Ancient Greeks. By using a fictional source to relate to a real place and time, the reader must be able to find a way to apply the fiction to the fact. That being said, one of the most intriguing examples of applying fiction to a real life situation is what a reader can learn about slavery through The Odyssey. Though the topic isn’t widely covered or discussed in the book, when it is mentioned it is relatively easy to draw a