Odyssey Paper
...that are perceived to be superhuman and subhuman as well as with the less than fully human. Throughout the course of this paper you will be introduced to a vast number of characters and several circumstances will be examined in order to answer the question of what it is to be human and fully human.
Up until the time Telemakhos leaves to find news of his father, he is viewed as naïve and child-like by the suitors and his own mother, even though he is in his late teens. This lack of recognition can be attributed to Telemakhos’s poor choices, or lack of choices early in the epic. While Telemakhos remained loyal to a father he has never known, without Athena’s assistance he would have done absolutely nothing about the suitors. Though it was this loyalty to his father that cast him on his journey to Sparta. Nestor reinforces in the prince a respect for loyalty and faith. After he joins his father and is made an important part of the king’s plot to overcome the suitors, a good deal of Telemakhos’ motivation is based on faith. He believes in the support of the gods, especially Athena; and he believes in this great man, his father, whom he has known only as a legend. Telemakhos rarely wavers. At the showdown with the suitors in the great hall, he is shrewd enough to get his mother out of the line of fire and mature enough to be a real help to Odysseus. The prince stands against more than a hundred suitors with only his father and a couple of herdsmen on his side. He fights valiantly, earning his father’s respect and trust.
Now the greatest contrast among the secondary characters are between the untamed race of one-eyed cannibalistic Kyklops who force our hero to stay for lunch and the hospitable, civilized god-fearing Phaiakians who sail Odysseus home to Ithaka. I will use King Alkinoos and Polyphemos to represent their respected people and islands....
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