Similarity Between The Odyssey And Home

Paradigms between the Odyssey and the Home The Odyssey, by Homer, is a mythical tale of transformation, journey, struggles and return, with strong distinct layers of Greek culture and hospitality. It is an epic adventure featuring a strong, virtuous and admirable hero, Odysseus. While, Toni Morrison's Home accentuates a tale of redemption: an edgy and tortured story of a man's desperate search for himself in the world deformed by war. The story features two siblings: Frank Money, a veteran, and his younger sister Cee, a woman who is on the verge of dying at the hands of a barbarous doctor. In both of the stories, the main character focuses on - how to return home? - though both characters are welcomed on a different purpose. Thus, there are number of similarities and differences that set their own distinct worldviews. I would …show more content…
It is evident in the writings of the Odyssey that hospitality has played a major role in deciding the protagonists and the antagonists in the epic. Arriving strangers or wayfarers are in the need of at least some help while the residents themselves might sometime be the wayfarers. So, hospitality is a two-way road. Lack of hospitality has affected Odysseus in a larger extent. He was being very badly treated by the suitors when he returned Ithaka in the disguise of a beggar. Telemachus and Penelope cannot dislodge them neither can they get any help from their community because suitors where the strongest group in the area. We can notice the similarity in Lotus, the place which is even worse than any battlefield, as felt by Frank "There was no goal other than breathing, nothing to win and, save for somebody else's quite death, nothing to survive or worth surviving for" (Morrison 83, 7-10). The community in Lotus is being described as dumb, boring and vulnerable. People there, knew nothing or wanted to know nothing at