When Odysseus went back to Ithaca he manages to withhold his emotions to such an extreme level. After 20 years of not seeing his home and family, he manages to put off that intense emotion that goes with the classic homecoming story.
Something that struck me, was that throughout the rest of the Odyssey, Odysseus is seen showing tons of emotion. He’s constantly crying: when he hears the bard telling his story at the feast with the Phaeacians or even when we first meet Odysseus, weeping on Calypso’s island. So we can see from the majority of the books that Odysseus is very in tune with his emotions and he’s obviously been through a lot, that hiding those emotions gets pretty hard.
But when Odysseus enters Ithaca, he suddenly changes. The most emotion he really shows is when he sheds a tear when he is reunited with his loyal dog, Argos. And even that, which, as we talked about in class, was a very iconic homecoming moment, Odysseus couldn’t really savor. At this point I realized that I probably didn’t give Odysseus enough credit on his mental strength. In general, I was sort of disappointed with Odysseus. Before reading the Odyssey, I thought Odysseus was going to be the stereotypical hero, with almost no faults. But as we progressed through the books, my opinion of him has slowly gone down.
But this huge contrast of his emotional crying during his wanderings to his stoic homecoming, made me rethink my opinion of him. To me this first took away from his humanity. Even when he first learned about being in Ithaca, I was surprised that he was able to keep such a cool face. Maybe it was the fact that it's been so long, and he couldn't believe that he was finally home, but I just couldn't believe it. Granted, when Odysseus was reunited with Telemachus, he was crying plenty. But as his strategic plan of taking his home back continued, I realized that his mental strength must've been insanely strong if he was able to walk into his home, 20 years later, able to suppress all that excitement. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still think that Odysseus is not morally just and has plenty of faults. But his extreme strengths, physically and emotionally, is notable.
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ReplyDelete*DELETES COMMENT BC I MADE A TYPO HA HA HA*
ReplyDeleteI was a little confused by "I thought Odysseus was going to be the stereotypical hero, with almost no faults" and then your opinion going down further since... I dunno... saying "stereotypical" already sounds pretty cynical and almost dismissive? Like as though even if Odysseus was this near perfect hero figure you still wouldn't find him a very compelling character. I might be reading too much into word choice.
Anyway, assuming the emotionally expressive Odysseus is the true version of him, it is pretty impressive he has the self control to rein it all in for the sake of pulling off his plan. Of course, being impressed by someone's strength is a lot different from liking them. I guess the takeaway would be drawing the line between admiring Odysseus' mind and admiring his mentality?
Yeah this is a good point; I hadn't connected before that Odysseus's emotional restraint during his homecoming would be especially difficult for him since he's such an emotional guy the rest of the time. I wonder which characteristic would have been more lauded in Ancient Greece. Is the audience supposed to cheer when he's emotionally expressive, like in Latin America, or when he's stoic, like Smithy Ide in New England?
ReplyDeleteI agree - it does detract from our sense of Odysseus as an empathetic character, when we see a contradiction between his professed homesickness and apparent ability to disguise himself from his home and wife. Odysseus' emotional states seem a little confusing, in context of his later restraint when returned to Ithaca.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting dilemma: on one hand, we admire Odysseus's extreme self-control, and we *get* how much self-control this stuff requires in large part because we've seen him be so emo throughout his wanderings. On the other hand, this ability to put such a firm cap on his emotions--even when seeing his son, or wife, or father (or dog!) again for the first time in *twenty years*--makes him seem scarily self-controlled, off-puttingly so. And yet, that control is absolutely necessary for the plan to come off.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the part where this self-control seems far out of hand is when he's (totally unnecessarily) "testing" his father, after the slaughter, mainly just messing with him to get him talking about "Odysseus" and seeing what he'll say. But as his dad starts weeping, realizing that the disguised Odysseus's story means that his son will not be coming home anytime soon, Odysseus suddenly can't deal, throws off the whole ruse, and reveals his identity. It's like he can't stop himself from the "testing" and the fun of listening to people talk about you incognito--but then he finally snaps out of it and realizes he doesn't need to be doing this crap anymore.