High Disrespects Of Hospitality In Homer's The Odyssey

Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host. Today this is usually a good relationship, where the host and the guest both show respect for each other. But in The Odyssey, hospitality is seen very differently from how it is today. In most cases, the guests in The Odyssey shows a high disrespect of their host. They show this disrespect whether the host is a god or a mortal, which could ultimately result in a god punishing them with a curse or even death. On the other hand, the hosts in The Odyssey show their guests a great amount of resect when they are visiting. In Book 5 of The Odyssey, during Odysseus’s journey back home from Troy he ends up trapped on an island with the nymph Calypso. The book states “Now he’s left to pine on an island, racked with grief in the nymph calypso’s house-she holds him there by force” (page 153) and “…weeping there as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and …show more content…
These all show that as a host, Calypso is refusing to let Odysseus leave her island and does things to him that he does not consent to. Today this would be seen as rude, forcing a guest to …show more content…
He comes home to find many suitors trying to marry his wife. Odysseus runs into a few suitors, one in particular who is very disrespectful to him. “Not a shred of sense in your head, you filthy drifter! Not content to feast at your ease with us, the island’s pride?” (page 433). Although the man doesn’t know he is Odysseus, today it would be impolite to insult other guests no matter what their status is or what they look like. Later on Odysseus’s wife, unbeknownst to her, come to defend him by saying “‘how impolite it would be, how wrong, to scant whatever guest Telemachus welcomes into his house.” (page 434). Today, defending a guest would show how much you care for their wellbeing, no matter who they are and this is just what Odysseus’s wife