Odysseus: The Complexity Of Humanity In Homer's Odyssey

In Homer’s Odyssey, the overall meaning is that in order to rule over others, one must be able to fully understand themselves and their role in society. For Odysseus to return home, he had to first become a mature individual that was able to rule over his kingdom. In the adventures and tales of Odysseus it is demonstrated that even though he desires to return home to his wife, son, and kingdom, he has to face the temptations that draw him away from his main goal in order to mature into the ruler he is supposed to be.
It takes many years for Odysseus to return back to his home, and many of those years are spent with other women as he wanders both physically and sexually. He spends eight whole years with Calypso before he decides to return back to his journey back to Ithaca even though the goddess offers him the chance of immortality. He also falls into this same temptation trap with Circe, but again returns to his …show more content…
Odysseus is the image of a true, emotional man at the closing of the epic, while at the beginning of the adventures he only symbolized an overly masculine, ignorant figure that truly believed he was higher and mightier than the gods that ruled over him. When Odysseus is first reunited his son Telemachus, he is overwhelmed with emotion and allows tears to stream from his eyes even though he is known to hold his emotions back, this demonstrates that the adventures and toils he has endured in the epic shaped Odysseus into a more mature and humble man. By being able to honestly show his own emotions, he proves that he has faced enough through his time away from his kingdom to rightfully take his throne back as a mature man that cares more about others than himself. The adventures that Odysseus experiences led him to discovering what it truly meant to have others rely on him as a ruler and a head-of-house