Loyalty in Homer's Odyssey

Loyal Relationships in Homer's Odyssey

Loyalty is heroic. Loyalty is defined as faithfulness or devotion to a person, cause, obligations, or duties. In Homer's Odyssey one can see loyalty in many forms. Odysseus is loyal to the gods whom he realized held his life in their hands. Penelope was loyal to Odysseus, while trying not to offend the rude suitors. Telemachus was loyal to a father whom he only knew from the stories he had been told. Time and time again we see loyalty in the strongest sense, complete fidelity in time of uncertainty.

In a world where today, we can hardly hope for fidelity and allegiance in the one we choose to give our love to, it might be difficult to understand the plight of Penelope and Telemachus. Even Odysseus would have understood if Penelope had already found love in another man, as evidenced when he asks his mother "And tell me of my wife: how runs her thought, still with her child, still keeping our domains, or bride again to the best of the Akaians?" (Lawall 335). After all Odysseus had been gone for twenty years.

Telemachus is now twenty-on...