Odysseus True Love Is Home In Homer's Odyssey

1387 Words3 Pages

“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts”. Oliver Wendell Holmes perfectly captures the essence of Odysseus’ journey home. In his novel, The Odyssey, Homer describes home not as a geographical location, but moreover, an emotional state of being. In order for Odysseus to truly get home, he must achieve two particular emotional states. One, where he is in an environment where he those around him welcome, love, and cherish him, and, two, where he finds joy, peace, and fulfillment in his own heart. As far as a chronological setting is concerned, Odysseus is home after killing the suitors, revealing himself to his father, and reconciling with the townspeople. One may argue, however, that Odysseus is home simply …show more content…

One must be welcomed home by those around him if he is to be considered fully home. While this does not mean that the nature of home is solely dependent upon the emotional status of those around the one coming home, they do, in part, weigh heavily on where home is. The reader can see this welcoming home when Odysseus reveals himself to his father, the last of his immediate family. Homer writes, “The old man’s knees failed him, his heart grew faint, recalling all that Odysseus calmly told. He clutched his son.” The love of father and son is so strong here that Laërtês’ heart seems to fail him, for he cannot believe what he is seeing. Odysseus’ homecoming is almost too good to be true, but through the physical embrace of father and son, the reader can clearly see the immense outpouring of love and welcoming home that Odysseus receives. However, this love is not merely obtained by his family, but by those who barely knew him, and even those considered lower in the social hierarchy of Ithika. The fourteenth book of the Odyssey exemplifies this idea when the lowly swineherd is speaking to Odysseus, unaware that the wanderer is Odysseus himself, “Never again shall I have for my lot a master mild as he was anywhere – not even with my parents at home, where I was born and bred. I miss them less than I do him… Not it is …show more content…

The novel holds returning home in a higher position than going out and winning fame and glory, as the Iliad presents. Throughout the entirety of the novel, Odysseus simply wants to get home, but moreover, he is meant to get home, it is his destiny. Book five shows this when Zeus, the most powerful and fate-controlling of the gods, says, “His [Odysseus] is to see his friends again under his own roof, in his own country”. Once again this notion of Odysseus’s destiny is presented when another god, Hermes, speaking of Odysseus, says, “His destiny, his homecoming, is at hand” . Once more, in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, one can see that Odysseus is not meant to live a life in warfare, for that is a fleeting, earthly pleasure, but to return home and end his life in peace among the comfort and love of his own home around his loved ones. Here Telresias says to Odysseus, “Then a seaborne death soft at his hands of mist will come upon you when you are wearied out with rich old age, your country folk in blessed peace around you. And this shall be just as I foretell”. Here the reader can clearly see that it is a higher calling, especially in Odysseus’ case, to return home in peace. This notion takes the standard that glory and fame are the most important ideals in life, and replaces them will a peace and joy of heart, only found when one truly returns

More about Odysseus True Love Is Home In Homer's Odyssey

Open Document