Suitors In The Odyssey

Common Odyssey’s Essay

In the graphic novel The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds the suitors are much like the sharks in the book The Old Man and the Sea. The Suitors “eat away” at Odysseus’s wife much like how the Mako sharks eat away at the the Marlin the Old Man caught. In The Odyssey Gareth Hinds uses his artistic talent to depict the suitors as over confident pigs. He does this by associating a drab color with the suitors in each frame, and also by always putting smug smiles on their faces. On page nine and eleven in the Odyssey you can tell the mood of the suitors is very happy and careless while Odysseus’s wife is very melancholy. The Suitors are slowly wearing away Odysseus’s wife just like the sharks slowly eat away at the body of the marlin.

On page eleven all the suitors gaze up at Odysseus's wife just as I imagine the sharks would gaze up at the Marlin on the side of Santiago’s boat. They stare at her, all wanting a piece of her while she is defenceless. I imagine the sharks all staring at the dead defenceless marlin with the exact same exact look.

Ernest hemingway is just as craftful at sculpting his words as Gareth Hinds is at drawing his thoughts. In The Old Man and the Sea the Old man battles with the sharks as long as he can. knowing that inevitably the sharks will eat all the meat on his greatest catch. He never gives up and keeps fighting until the very end. At many points over his Journey Odysseus probably felt like failure was inevitable and that he would never make it back home to his beloved wife and Ithaca. But Odysseus never gives up and keeps fighting. On page one-hundred and three in The Old Man and the Sea the sharks take a forty pound chunk out of the marlins slowly deteriorating the once grand fish. The suitors in ithaca slowly “take bites” out of the Odysseus’s wife and she slowly loses hope the Odysseus’s wife will ever come home. It is evident that the suitors in The Odyssey are much like the sharks in The Old Man and the Sea.