AUCX 190: MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES: Homer's Odyssey (Day One: Books 1-5)

AUCX 190: MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES: Homer's Odyssey (Day One: Books 1-5): Please respond to two questions or bring up your own topics (and analyses) for discussion: 1. The opening verses (the prologue) of Book One...

4) I am reading the Odyssey with an open mind, I do not even know the story. I never had the opportunity to study classical literature before so these are all very new stories to me. Being The Odyssey with Telemachus’s story shows that he is just as important as his father. He makes an effort, with the help of the gods, to save his father’s kingdom, mother and even rescue Odysseus. Telemachus has a strong religious belief and strives to search for his missing father. Odysseus is located on an unknown island and is not even rescued by his son, but let free by the gods.

It will be interesting to see if Telemachus’s and Odysseus’s paths cross one another or if the son’s story will just end. The story is title Odyssey not Telemachus, so I will take an educated guess and assume the stories from now on will focus on Odysseus.

5) The text says Telemachus was an infant when Odysseus went to war and now he is just a young adult. Without a father Telemachus is forced to mature fast and take care of his mother and father’s kingdom, which is being taken advantage of. Telemachus is reached out by Artemis, the goddess of wisdom and is told to send away his mothers suitors and find his missing father. Without question he follows these orders and never doubts the truth in them. He ventures on to search for his father without telling anyone, but his nurse in the kingdom. He visits Troy and Greece searching for his father, but the only clue he finds is from Proteus in Sparta. This is strange because I think Sparta is an enemy country of where Telemachus is from. Having never heard these stories before makes it difficult to connect the dots with this ancient way of writing.

Telemachus becomes a man while on this journey to find his missing father. He is following the advice of gods and has help from another prince. This journey represents something similar that his father, Odysseus might do. Shows that father and son may be reunited soon or that the son will now have the power and experience to save his father.