Unselfish Actions In The Odyssey

Everyone wants to have a joyful life, although it is easier for some and harder for others to achieve the goal of being satisfied. Relationships, success, and respect are just a few factors in determining the happiness of each individual, not to mention helpfulness. The smallest act of kindness can potentially make someone’s day. Doing unselfish actions can also make one feel respectable. Inviting someone over for a meal is certainly a wonderful action, as long as the motives are not selfish. Nourishment certainly can be a source of evil, as demonstrated by The Odyssey, an epic, and The Long Walk, an autobiography. Written by the Greek Homer and the Polish Slavomir Rawicz respectively, the books share many common features, even though these …show more content…
While Odysseus certainly has many misfortunes, he survives each one and continues toward his palace. Due to Odysseus’s absence, the suitors take over his house and try to marry his wife. Penelope tells the suitors that she will remarry when she has finished weaving a shroud for Lord Laertes. However, “‘every night [she] had torches set beside it and undid the work’” (Homer 17). The suitors act in such a horrible way that the reader is supposed to want Odysseus to return as soon as possible and save his palace from the suitors. Odysseus returns to the palace disguised as a beggar, and successfully draws an arrow that the suitors could not. The weak vagabond’s drawing of an arrow illustrates how the arrogant suitors are dethroned by even the least, and doom certainly falls on the suitors, as foretold by the prophecy. However, Odysseus’s disguise is so good that even his own wife cannot recognize him. Penelope recognizes Odysseus only after she exclaims that she would move Odysseus’s bed, causing Odysseus to cry out that it is immovable. Stories like this one are epics, where the hero returns to his or home after many adventures. Odysseus satisfies this requirement, bring the book to an appropriate