The Odyssey Lotus Addiction Essay

As Australian poet, Luke Davies, once wrote, “When you can stop, you don’t want to, and when you want to stop, you can’t..”, one can find many references toward addiction in the Lotus-eater story in The Odyssey. The Odyssey written by Homer follows the travels and tribulations faced by Odysseus on his journey home after fighting in the Trojan War. On one of their many adventures, Odysseus and his crew arrive at the Lotus-eater island where they then become addicted and infatuated with the lotus and forget to return to the ship because of the brainwashing qualities of the fruit. Because of this, they do not concentrate on the task at hand; therefore losing focus on the bigger picture of their duties which is finding a way to get back home to their families.

One reason that addiction is detrimental in this story is that it caused Odysseus’ crew to lose sight of the important goal of collecting information of the Lotus-eaters while on the island.

When Odysseus’ crew arrive on the island to scout the Lotus-eaters, they discover that the Lotus-people only want to share the lotus flower with them. “Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit/lost all desire to send a message back, much less return / their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters / grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home dissolved forever.”(9.106-9)Once Odysseus’ crew try the abundant fruit, they no longer care about their mission of getting back home, the only thing that was important to them was the fruit that is being given to them. This shows that the lotus flower clouded their judgment and made them focus on the flower rather than Odysseus’ orders of collecting information about the

Lotus-eaters.

Throughout the Lotus-eater story, Odysseus’ seamen and the Lotus-eaters fall prey of addiction surrounding the significance of the tantalizing fruit, the lotus. The seamen’s addiction for the fruit clouded their judgment of returning to the ship with information about the Lotus-eaters, and the alluringness of the fruit made an appeal to the Lotus-eaters. These ideas of greed from the story can also be associated with modern day notions. This not only shows that fictional characters have concepts of clouded judgement from an abundance of addiction, but people too do as well because we too get distracted by alluring things and forget the bigger picture.