Penelope

In Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of Homer’s, The Odyssey, the women play a crucial role to Odysseus’ journey home. Despite the fact that throughout the poem women are the inferior beings to men, it is with the power of Helen, Penelope, Athena, Kirke, Kalypso, and Nausikaa that Odysseus is able to return home. While each of these women, goddess or not, play a crucial role they are all very different and thus play different roles throughout the poem. While they all have different roles all of…

is about Odysseus’ twenty year journey to return back to Ithaca after the trojan war. While Odysseus is facing multiple obstacles throughout his struggle to return, his faithful wife Penelope and his son Telemachus are at home watching their palace become destroyed by suitors who want to obtain Penelope’s hand. Penelope struggles to hold them back while she waits for her husband who is king of Ithaca to return home, but…

Penelope was a freshman honor student at a state university and having a hard time transitioning into college life. High school had been an easy task for her; she never needed to study and always made the best grades. When she had failed her first college test, her parents began breathing down her neck. However, she still wanted to use her new found freedom to have some fun before all the adult responsibilities became her everyday life. Penelope was growing frustrated. She believed the required…

from home, “numerous suitors...have been continually seeking the hand of his wife, Penelope, in marriage, while overrunning Odysseus’ palace and enjoying themselves at Penelope’s expense” (Homer 23). Evidently, the suitors harass Penelope because they feel that she is inferior to them. The suitors have more authority over her only because they are males, rather than because they are more skilled or wealthy. Penelope could not do much to stop the men, not just because there were too many men, but…

giving Odysseus confidence in his return. For example, Penelope is so sure of his return, so she weaves the shroud for Laertes everyday and then unweaves it at night because she made a deal with the suitors to not marry until the shroud is finished. Penelope tricks them to prolong her marriage to a suitor. She believes Odysseus will return and “destruction is clear for each and every suitor; not a soul escapes his death and doom” (408). After Penelope understands the dream she woke up from, she…

evidence that women can use sexuality as a control device. When women were allowed to express their sexuality however they felt necessary, they had the power to make men act different than they normally would and definitely act out of character. Penelope is a great example of this; she would simply flaunt her body around which created a huge disturbance for men which made them lash out and act much differently than they normally would. Throughout the entire epic it was not her fault that the…

stress disorder for the rest of his life. These are issues Homer never addressed. As for Warbucks, he learned to open his heart to emotion, to become a full functioning member of society again. Additionally, Homer never fully realized the humanity of Penelope as a human…

many worldwide. In this book we find Odysseus going through many hardships before finally getting back to his hometown in Ithaca. What helped him go through these hardships is the though of getting back to his family, his son Telemachus and his wife Penelope. “Agamemnon” written by Aeschylus, is a tragic story whose main character, Agamemnon, undergoes a chain of events that are both similar and different from each other. One of the similarities between these two characters is that both…

order to protect her identity from the humans. Throughout the poem, she uses different disguises in her interactions with the characters to achieve a specific goal for each situation. Specifically, she encounters Telemachus, Nausicca, Odysseus, and Penelope, assisting them in each in a different way. To keep her identity hidden, she shows up to situations in different disguises. By doing this, she can assist the mortals without them knowing she is a goddess and constantly asking her for…

family again, Odysseus is brought great joy and relief which he hasn’t felt for years. The author shows Odysseus’ joy when he states: “Now from his [Odysseus’] breast into his eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife [Penelope], clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sun warmed earth is longed for by a swimmer” (Homer, Od. 23.81-84). In Odysseus’ case, his return home is very important in his journey to heroism, because it shows how all of his…