No Classmates!! the Odyssey

     In The Odyssey Part III, Odysseus final returns home to Ithaca. He had spent 20 years on his great adventure. When he finally returns home, the goddess Athena warns Odysseus of the suitors that are at his home. She tells him to dress as a beggar. If he wouldn’t have, the suitors would have tried to kill him, since they want his money and his wife Penelope. For 20 years she has tried to evade the suitors by giving them difficult tasks that they wouldn’t be able to complete. Her challenge this time was to fire Odysseus’s bow. No one was able to draw the bow, since only a man such as Odysseus could do so. Once most of the suitors went, there were only two men left, Odysseus and Antinous. Odysseus went first and easily shot his own bow. Right after that Antinous went. Antinous’s attempt was fatal; he ended up killing himself. With the suitors in outrage, they began to yell at Odysseus. Odysseus then says “for the plunder of his household and the bid for his wife they will pay with blood.” Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, helped Odysseus kill all of the suitors.  After this, Odysseus took a bath and was lent beauty by Athena. He now finally talks to Penelope. She wasn’t convinced just yet and tested him one last time. She asked Eurycleia to move the bed, but only Odysseus knew that it couldn’t have been moved. He becomes angry and yells at her, saying “Who dared to move my bed? No builder had the skill for that-unless a god came down to turn the trick.” The posts of the beds were made from trees, finally carved by Odysseus himself. Then finally, Penelope falls into his arms and she cries tears of joy. In conclusion, The Odyssey Part III is about how a hero returns home and reclaims his wife. This is more of a traditional ending.

The Penelopiad, however, shows a different point of view. It shows Penelope’s point of view and how she feels on Odysseus’s return. She accuses him of being “tricky and a liar.” Penelope is very bitter and regretful. She has a right to be. Odysseus doesn’t consider her in any of his actions and uses her. This is very interesting because in The Odyssey, she is shown to be very happy on his return. But in this, she has more of a somewhat happy but mostly disappointed attitude. She was probably outraged with the thought that he was out adventuring and sometimes being lured in by women, while she was home trying to stay loyal and fight the temptations to not remarry. In conclusion, The Penelopiad offers a different perspective of Odysseus’s return to Ithaca. Instead of the more traditional way to end a story, this one is more modern. It shows that women have these thoughts and make you think deeper about a character’s emotions throughout a story.

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