Land Of The Lotus Eaters In Homer's The Odyssey

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Land of the Lotus Eaters In Book 9 of The Odyssey by Homer there is a section that describes people who eat and live by the Lotus flower, the Lotus Eaters. These are a peaceful people that Odysseus and his men fall upon in their journey. In the book they seem to fall under some sort of power from eating the flower and then Odysseus and his men never want to return home, giving up hope as well. Homer's The Odyssey isn't the only representation of these Lotus Eaters, Tennyson Tennyson wrote a poem called “The Lotus Eaters”, depicting more how Odysseus and his men felt while they were on the Lotus Eater’s Island. The emotional and spiritual traits of the characters in each piece differed but all focused on how the flower gave them a blissful feeling. Odysseus and his men in Book 9 started off …show more content…

The theme for Homer's The Odyssey Book 9 would be to stay in the real world and not to fall for bliss, or emotional wealth. The reason for this is that Odysseus and his men land on the island and get sucked right into it and fall under the Lotus Eaters spell. “But gave them lotus plants to eat, whose fruit, sweet as honey, made any man who tried it lose his desire ever to journey home” (Homer, Lines 121-123). They all fall under this bliss and had to physically be forced off of the island. The theme is different in Tennyson’s poem “The Lotus Eaters”, the theme is to let the bliss control, let death come. That’s how the men all felt, they seemed to be awaiting death. To take an easy way out and not have to worry about anything anymore, “surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil,” (Tennyson, Line 171). The Land of the Lotus Eaters leaned more towards a theme of good comes from seclusion. This is shown by how Bearden made sure to show that they are alone on the island with just the Lotus Eaters. He also depicts that the men are having a good time, nothing to show that they would want to

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