Calypso and Circe, Important Women of Homer's Odyssey

Calypso and Circe, Important Women of Homer's Odyssey

Of all the themes in the Odyssey, the one that seems to stand out is Odysseus's struggle to return home. There are many reasons why his journey is deterred, the most obvious being the women he encounters. Of the women, their are two that truly represent "the different aspects of creative and destructive feminiinty." (Taylor, 571)

Calypso is a woman who carries the "true appeal" of a woman, beauty. She offers Odysseus eternal life, and an end to physical suffering. With her, he will be able to keep his identity as a man and enjoy the different pleasures she can offer. She seems like the most tempting offer for Odysseus besides his wife, but he denies her offer. "Odysseus refuses Calypso's offer of bodily immortality for the same reasons that he resists bodily death: in neither case could be preserve his whole being as Odysseus." (Taylor, 571)

I found his refusal to be quite commendable, though his excuse was not.

Circe's charms are also directed towards the same place, but not as blatently as Calypso's. She drugs Odysseus's men to make them forget their homes and then she turns them into pigs. Taylor describes this sequence of events as "significant because it represents the metamorphosis as a collary of forgetting one's native land. The transformation of man to animal is a vivid image of the lessening of human consciousness which forgetting one's origings implies." (Taylor, 572) He also states that the story suggests that "men who let themselves be drugged into a lower level of awareness by the destructive power of the enchantress, become no more than animals to be kept as the woman's pet." (Taylor, 572)

I found this quote to be quite interesting. It made me think of how this could relate to our own societies "fallen men" and also women. Many people today consume alcohol or recreational drugs and let it control their actions, even though if they were sober, they would not be behaving this way. Our society today is weak, just like in the story, to different "potions" that can affect their mental capacity to think straight.