In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge tells the story of a sailor and his perilous adventures. This tale follows the Mariner and his crew as they travel between the equator and the South Pole, and then travel back to England. On...
The Coen Brothers’ 2000 adventure film O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an American adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. This recent comedy follows three escaped convicts as they search for a hidden treasure. Despite the considerable gap between the creation of these two...
In the Homeric world, the very roots of stories were gendered. The Muses, who inspired humans to create story and song, were women, the daughters of Memory. Stories thus have gendered identities from their very inception, and in the Odyssey, the men and women telling...
Prompt Examples for “The Odyssey” Essay Violence as a Catalyst for Conflict: Analyze how acts of violence serve as catalysts for conflict and tension in both “The Odyssey” and “Antigone,” and discuss the consequences of these conflicts on the characters and plot. Moral and Ethical...
Readers of the Odyssey could certainly find frustration in crafting a judgment of Odysseus’ decision to depart from life alongside the goddess Kalypso. Some might point to a yearning for his day of homecoming. Others might argue precisely the opposite – that “godlike Odysseus” simply...
Tales of women as sorceresses and magic-wielders abound in the literature and mythology of cultures that promote the gendered binary of culture over nature, activity over passivity, and reason over superstition. In these patriarchal societies, women are marginalized from society and have no agency of...
Mortals: The Playthings of Zeus Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay Odysseus escapes the island of Cyclops unharmed. He manages to avoid death at the face of...
Virgil’s The Aeneid and Homer’s the Odyssey share several structures such as the Epic Exordium and Homeric Epithets, yet the movement and organization of time tie them together by grounding the stories in the real world as much as possible. This use of time allows...
In his epic poems, Homer often chooses commonplace objects to symbolically encompass many themes of the story. In The Iliad, a golden nail-studded scepter embodies the major themes of the epic, and the marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope serves the same role in The...
Homer’s Odyssey is a testament to how Homer believes people should conduct themselves in society. His characters are rewarded when they conduct themselves ideally and they are punished when they fail to abide by certain behavioral codes. One of the social gestures that Homer addresses...
The Odyssey
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The characteristics of Homeric epic are many and varied, but the key elements of the Odyssey and the Iliad can be narrowed down to two main things: a focus on one hero (Achilles and Odysseus, respectively) and the need for that hero to attain kleos,...
The oral tradition is the oldest and most archaic manner of human discourse. The Odyssey of Homer is an example of a literary work that emphasizes the importance of such oral tradition. In it, the hero, Odysseus, is faced with the tasks of detailing, through...
The character of Nausikaa is somewhat of an anomaly within The Odyssey. Among women, she is a wholly developed character. Though such depth initially engages Odysseus, it becomes the force that propels him to his ultimate homecoming. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it...
The foreboding dark mist in the gloom of the night (141) shadowing Odysseus arrival to the island of the Cyclopes suggests a sinister and frightening site. Recounting the unnaturalness of the occupants and the horror of the ensuing events, Odysseus narration seemingly confirms this interpretation....
The name “Odysseus” resonates in the creak of opening doors in the city of Troy, the murmur of waves, and the song of the Sirens. Over the course of the epic tale, Odysseus’ heroism proves far more nuanced than the simple feats of his success...
In the Odyssey, Homer uses architecture and landscape as metaphors for the personalities of the people to which each respective architectural description relates. For this reason, a strong emphasis is placed on explicit details when depictions of homes, land, and interior design are mentioned. To...
Homer’s Odyssey and Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” each depict the great power of the Sirens of Greek mythology; on a deeper level, the two works explore the destructiveness of women through the archetype of the femme fatale. Both Homer and Atwood highlight the influence women...
Homeric Epic has become a staple of the modern evaluation of the ancient Greco-Roman world. It is among the great literary works of history, having withstood the tests of time and remaining so widely popular. Whether we believe Homer was an individual, a group, or...
In Act IV, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s King Richard II, King Richard II states, “my grief lies all within; / And these external manners of laments / Are merely shadows to the unseen grief / That swells with silence in the tortured soul; /...