Vengeance And Vanity In The Trojan War

Penelope, wife of Odysseus is the paradigm woman. After the Trojan war, there is no news of Odysseus. No one knows of his whereabouts or what his plans were. Odysseus stays lost at sea for nearly twenty years, yet Penelope still says faithful and has no skeptic thoughts. Suitors come to wed Penelope and amass Odysseus’s treasure, however when asked when she would marry she says the time would come soon; it never did.

She claimed “He caught my right hand. . .and said . . . ‘but once you see the beard on the boy’s cheek, you wed the man you like, and leave your house behind’. . .” However, that was a lie, since shortly after, Homer wrote “Staunch Odysseus glowed with joy to hear all

In an epic poem, The Odyssey, by Homer, Odysseus struggles to come back home while his wife, Penelope, faces barbarous suitors who plague her house to court her for the marriage in order to claim the kingship of Ithaca. With an absence of the man of the household and a son who is not old enough to rule over the country and handle the domestic complications, Penelope endeavors to keep the household orderly and civilized. In order to prevent further chaos in the household, Penelope maintains her role as the Queen of Ithaca and Odysseus’s wife through her loyalty and cunning. For a woman who does not know when her man will return home, Penelope is extremely strong to keep hope and wait for her husband; thus, her unwavering loyalty to her husband

First, Athena makes a plan for Odysseus to meet Princess Nausicaa on Phaiacia. The two Greeks do meet, and even though Odysseus is a complete stranger, which the Phaiacians are not fond of, that Nausicaa is aware of, the princess welcomes Odysseus and makes a plan for him to stay in her father Alcinoos’ palace. When Odysseus arrives in the palace of Alcinoos, he is given a throne in which Alcinoos’ son Laodamas was previously sitting in, and is given a feast. “There they were, face to face: the King in his majesty, and the castaway with only his knowledge of man and his ready wit. Alcinoos held his hand out to Odysseus and led him from the hearth to a high seat where his own son was sitting, near himself, for he loved the courteous Laodamas best of all his sons.

While they are eating, the king has his bard sing stories, which by coincidence are of the stories of Troy and Odysseus. Odysseus upon hearing the stories of what he has endured starts to cry. Then the king Alcinous inquires why his guest is crying. It is then Odysseus tells his host who he is and starts to tell him the story of how he got to where he is now. Odysseus immediately blames the gods, “What pains-the gods have given me my share.”

Even though the Trojan War sets itself up as a very controversial topic to many people, there is one positive aspect to this topic. The Trojan War contributed specific evidence to our generation on how greeks fought or may have fought battles through the Illiad. One could classify homeric warfare used by the greeks with simple weaponry, specific tactics in practice and use of humanistic ideologies.

Upon being left by her husband during a decade-long journey, Penelope’s depressed character, like Hecuba’s character, accentuates the misery of women during that time. Once stripped of the only source of power and happiness they had—men in society—women were deemed miserable, useless, and awful in society. Penelope spent years waiting for Odysseus, and the audience watches as a beautiful, popular woman, weeps over her missing husband and lives a long, melancholy life. Penelope grows impatient and stagnantly miserable; she begins to wish for death, for life was not worth living without her husband in her life. She begs, “How I wish chaste Artemis would give me a death so soft and now I would not go on in my heart, grieving all my life and longing for love of a husband excellent in every virtue.

In this passage they move from describing a particular woman (“she left behind the din…”) to speaking more generally about a group of women (“women sound the sorrows…”). 3a. Which specific woman are they referring to at the beginning of the passage? Helen, wife of Menelaus, the kind of Sparta, who was taken by Paris, Prince of Troy.

Helen was able to run away from Menelaus and go back to Troy with Paris. After a few years of her being said that she was kidnapped, she came back and had to suffer however Menelaus treated her. Helen found her own strength and told the truth of where she had been and how it was her choice to leave Sparta. Helen and Penelope are powerful greek women, but only Penelope is viewed as perfect for staying loyal to her husband. While Penelope was viewed as perfect for her loyalty to Odysseus, Aphrodite was able to sleep with whatever men she wanted to

The respectable male characters such as Odysseus treat women well, but mostly for their appearance and marriage potential. Near the beginning, after washing up on the island of the Pheaecians, he meets a girl and says, “Mistress: please: are you divine, or mortal? If one of those who dwell in the wide heaven, you are the most near to Artemis, I should say,” (8). To

The Greek gods viewed the Trojan War as an elaborate chess game, where the gods and

Odysseus follows the wisdom she shares, but not all of it. Because he doesn’t take her seriously and sees her as below him, he doesn’t take her wisdom earnestly. As a result of this fixed superiority on women this causes some problems on his way home. Throughout book 10 you see how the affect of a tempting woman can change the way a man uses his power.

It's because of women that this epic went in the way it did. It was because of Odysseus' love for Penelope that he needed to come back to Ithaca, and Athena made his voyage home

The suitors are going crazy and when he does this, but there rush of anger turns to fear when Odysseus tells what he is going to do to them. Then all the suitors change to pleading as they beg for lives and try to blame everything on Antinous who is dead! Nerveless Odysseus doesn’t believe them and proceeds to kill them, along with his son Telemachus. Then Athena sends down down

However, these contrasts between their personal thinking built most of valuable points in Odysseus' epic journey, and making a more intense story. To some extent, these women are not foolish at all because at least they are successful at leading people to believe that waiting is meaningful. The whole story happened during the dark centuries of women in Greece, when their value was limited behind men. However The “Odyssey” gives an opportunity to horror their role, also rejecting all erroneous preconceptions about the woman. Penelope -- a typical woman who represents for an image of a devoted wife, a mother of family and she is also an image of how women was treated at Greece.