Odysseus Immortality Essay

In The Odyssey, the goddess Calypso offers Odysseus immortality so that he would stay with her and not leave in pursuit of his family. The question being raised is, “If I, like Odysseus, was given the choice, would I choose to remain human? Why or why not?” This question is incredibly complex. Part of the decision would be the immortality issue. Would I like to live forever and not age or live a normal mortal life? To look at it fully, I have to look at all of its parts. To say “like Odysseus” is to say that I have family that I am trying to return to, a wife and a son, and not to mention an entire island that is mine. Another issue that I would have to raise, would be a moral issue. Leaving a wife and a son for another woman would

In this case, I have the opportunity to become immortal or stay a human. The human condition is something that is of specific interest to anyone who is analyzing a text. In The Odyssey and Beowulf, the reader sees the human capacity for love, the human capacity for leadership and also the tendency for humans want to be arrogant. The Odyssey speaks to the human capacity for love through Odysseus’s determination to return home. Odysseus had many enticing temptations that he could have indulged in, but in doing so he would have to give up his dream of returning to Ithaca. In book five the reader first finds Odysseus on an island with Calypso, a goddess who has fallen madly in love with Odysseus and has trapped him on her island. Hermes is sent by the gods to demand that Calypso let Odysseus be allowed to journey back to Ithaca. Hermes finds Odysseus, “On a headland, weeping there as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish, gazing over the barren sea through blinding tears.” Odysseus is on an island with a beautiful goddess who wants nothing more than to be his lover. The temptation to give in to her desperate pleas for love and stay with her on the island had to be somewhat enticing. As if it was not hard enough not to give in to that temptation, Calypso then offers to make Odysseus immortal just so that Calypso and Odysseus could be together forever, but Odysseus is on the highland crying because he wants to return to his family. This speaks to how powerful true love is to humanity. In Beowulf, Beowulf has no family. The closest thing he has to loved ones are the subjects of his rule. In the scene right before Beowulf fights the dragon, the narrator says of Beowulf, “Kinship true can never be marred in a noble mind!” I take this to mean that true relationships, such as the ones that Beowulf