Afterlife In The Odyssey

Afterlife

Afterlife is a common topic everywhere we look – in television shows, in movies, in our everyday lives, and even in books. Our own portrayal of life after death comes from others’ perceptions that stick with us. In literature, this is no different. In Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, we are exposed to one of the more unique views of the underworld that has ever been published. This view, however, was not completely original. It is, instead, based upon a foundation that can be found in two earlier books: Homer’s the Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. The three works are not perfectly identical by any means when it comes to their views of the afterlife, but it is interesting to see how each compare to the others and perhaps how the first two
In the Odyssey, Homer talks less about what the afterlife looks like and more about the conditions there. We learn that all mortal men, good or bad, descend to Hades, or the underworld, after death. In the book, Odysseus embarks on a journey back to his wife, Penelope, but is detoured through the underworld. While there, he questions many dead souls, or “shades”, and he discovers that they, the shades, have their knowledge from before their deaths but lack the ability to see or understand the current world around them once they enter the kingdom of the underworld. This is perhaps a way of punishing those that are doomed to Hades. One example of this is when Odysseus asks Achilles about his son and Achilles cannot answer the simple question in Lines 496-499 of Book XI. Later, Odysseus is surprised to find out that Minos, a king during his life, continues to have power in the underworld by passing out justice to the dead (Homer, Book XI, Lines 562-571). Later in his journey through the underworld, Odysseus is exposed to the punishments that are given to different souls. In book XI, lines 572-590, we see a challenge before Tantalus in which is never won. He is forever thirsty and hungry but cannot eat or drink despite having food and water in his possession. Later, we see Sisyphus punished in a similar way. He is in a never-ending cycle of pushing a boulder up
An immediate similarity between this book and the Odyssey is the journey that each main character embarks on. In this book, Aeneas travels to the afterlife for reasons similar to those of Odysseus’: he is seeking questions from someone who can only be found in the afterlife. Virgil, however, presents us with many more details about the underworld and all that it possesses. Aeneas’s travels through the underworld bring him to a ferryman named Charon (Virgil, Book VI, Lines 335-338). Charon, though, does not ferry for everyone; Charon will not ferry for the dead souls that have not yet received proper burials. This, perhaps, could mean that these souls are seen as unclean or unhealthy and are therefore punished because of it. Charon, who does not encounter very many living souls down in the underworld, is surprised to see Aeneas. He does not like Aeneas and requires that he, Aeneas, must present a golden stick before he can gain passage across the river (Virgil, Book VI, Lines 461-476). Throughout these books in the Aeneid we learn that there are many different parts of the underworld and different souls go to different parts. We also see through Aeneas’ travels that, like the Odyssey, punishments are fitted accordingly to the sins that were committed by the souls during their lives. Also, for the souls that have yet to ask for forgiveness for their sins in life, Tisiphone