Conflict in The Odyssey

The epic of The Odyssey by Homer is the second oldest surviving Greek text. The story contains many conflicts such as man v god, man v himself, and man v society. This paper will explore some of the important conflicts in this classic tale. Man v god is the most important conflict in the story. Towards the beginning of the story Odysseus goes to war against the Trojans and wins. What he doesn’t know is that the great God Poseidon favored Odysseus and his army and helped them win the Trojan War. Poseidon becomes very angry with Odysseus’s choice in not thanking him and causes a great deal of troubles for Odysseus and his men at sea. Odysseus planned on going home but because he didn’t thank the great God of the Sea and he gets off track and lost at sea with his men. Odysseus is sent to many places and eventually get’s stranded on Calypso’s island. He is finally released from her island and makes a boat and begins home. While on his way home Poseidon tortured him but not enough to kill him, only enough to make him remember one lesson about humans. His lesson is that humans are nothing without gods and it’s something Odysseus will never forget even while being at sea for twenty years. Another example of man v god conflict is Odysseus v Calypso. During Odysseus’s travel home he gets stranded on Calypso’s island. Her island is an island of all women who have never seen a male figure in their entire life. Calypso on the other hand hasn’t seen a male figure for as long as she can remember. His time spent on the island make Calypso fall deeply in love with him and wants him to stay forever; she even offers him immortality in return for marriage. While being kept on the island, Hermes, Zeus’s messenger delivers a message to Calypso telling her to release Odysseus because it is not his fate to marry her; his fate is to be back with his wife in Ithaca and to save his family and his home from the suitors. So Calypso decides to release Odysseus and Odysseus