Examples Of Archetype In The Odyssey

The Odyssey, revered to be one of the great works of ancient Greek tradition has a lot to teach us even in the modern world. Odysseus, his son Telemachus and Penelope all have relationships with the gods, some of these relationships seem strange at first but if we take a deeper look into them we can see that there is often an underlying message being taught. I wish to explore these messages and also the archetypal qualities the aforementioned characters possess to answer one question: what does this make us understand what it means to be human? In the Beginning of the Odyssey it seems at first a bit strange that a ruler like Odysseus, one who is so powerful would be in this conundrum to begin with. Odysseus definitely possesses the hero archetype, he left his community and showed intelligence and strength that others would try to emulate. A good example of Odysseus’s intelligence would be in the cave with the Polyphemus when odysseys famously told it his name was “nobody” (Homer 9.410) in order to
The gods seem to be aware of her emotional state and sometimes even keep information from her to avoid panic; a good example of this is when Eurycleia was washing the feet of Odysseus and Eurycleia discovers from a scar it is Odysseus and wanted desperately to tell Penelope it was her husband right there but “she could not catch the glance, she took no heed, Athena turned her direction elsewhere” (Homer 19.540). Penelope’s life is an interesting example of more Greek values that are fidelity and patience. The fact that Athena did not want Penelope to know also shows an important quality of the gods, that they are able to see the bigger picture, and have everything well planned