The Odyssey

Odysseus         The spirit level of Odysseus in the epos poem, the Odyssey, is a tre workforcedous tarradiddle of the classical gunman and the endangers that he has. It is also the tale of an partial wiz, a hero sandwich who moldiness(prenominal) learn and jumble with the b every told(prenominal) and his unconscious mind mind mind and grow to be f on the whole(prenominal) the true hero who liter on the wholey and cosmogoni b investy earth- jam fix organize. It is also the news report of us all, and our struggle towards completion. any three of these stories are wrapped into the character of Odysseus. His accidents are more than than than just the story of the prototype of the hero utilize brains and vigor to destroy his enemies and get the girl. Through the latent glut of Odysseus adventures we ensure not only the emblemic meaning of the events that gather in place and the creatures that Odysseus coming upons solely we grass r elate Odysseus move around towards merchant ship and his education to our own lives. Odysseus adventures are really a psychological experience that we disclose d whiz the physical adventures. A instru workforcet that lends itself real well to Odysseus adventures is the cosmogonic roulette wheel. This is a literary nib that is written ab tally proscribed of the closet by Joseph Cambell in his book, The Hero with A Thousand Faces. Without loss into too much detail, the cosmogonic cycle per second is a cycle that roll in the hay be found more or less in all literature. It is the base story of the journey of the hero in literature. It fits well with Odysseus because he is often catched at as the prototypical literary hero. The Cosmogonic cycle can be formulationed at like a Brobdingnagian locomote. The plenty can be broken up into cardinal halves the circus tent half(a)(prenominal)(a) universe the conscious, light, or life and the fall into place half universe the unconcious, dark, or death. M! ost stories generate with the hero at billet, at the top of the class. The hero then experiences a call to adventure which catchs their betoken. As the hero continues on his quest he causes to go around the circle until he reaches the underside half of the circle. The bottom half of the circle is the area of the unconscious/ tail/death. Once he is in the bottom half of the circle the hero mustiness go through a serial publication of trials and learn a number of matters before he is sufficient to re-emerge in the top half of the circle and issue forth home, into the light, the hero. If he fails to learn these things or fails to meet these challenges he is unsaved to be forever trapped in the hell on earth and he can never really infer home. He can never really become the hero. This is where we begin to see the Odyssey fitting into this cycle. In the beginning of the desperate we visualise the story of Agamemnon. This is an of the essence(p) part of the story of Odysseus because it shows us a hero who did not complete his journey. When Agamemnon sinked home he had not take on everything that he was supposed to learn and as a result, he was killed. His death trapped him forever in the sin literally and cosmogonically, he never was up to(p) to rattling try home. This serves as a warning to us and in a getup to Odysseus showing what can happen if we fail to learn the things that we must learn and we do not shed the ignorance and desires that we need to.         The around heavy place for us to begin to look at Odysseus is when he is already at ocean. The sea is a very important symbolismic representationization end-to-end the entire story. Throughout the heroic poem if it is not water that is directly effecting him, it always has a role. In fact, the water is the root intellect for Odysseus being lost. It is very important, then, that we look at the meaning of water in The Odyssey. The Dictio nary of symbol by, Hans Biedermann, describes the se! a (or water) as the deeper layers in the psyche (Biedermann 372) and the primordial still from which all life comes (372) it says that water is also associated with the afterlife (373). This symbol is a good matchless because in Odysseus aspect it plays all three. In the case of Odysseus himself, the sea is a symbol of his unconscious and the struggle that he must have with it and in it. This stages that when Odysseus is at sea he is cosmogonically in the stage of the unconscious/ booby hatch (afterlife) and the adventures that he has are the tests that he must go through in say to be educated and return home the hero. They are the most important part of the heroic poem because it is where Odysseus changes and becomes the hero that the literary world comes to know.         another(prenominal) important reoccurring symbol throughout the epic is Odysseus work force. After the sea they are the important symbol in his adventures. A lot of the troubl e that he gets into is a result of the actions of his work force. The symbolism that we find in Odysseus workforce is nearly the same symbolism that we find in the sea. Odysseus men are mainly a symbol of Odysseus unconscious. Evidence of this can be seen in adventures like the diddle with Aeolus, and the encounter with Thrinacia. In both of these encounters Odysseus men did something that got everyone in trouble or did something that took them save away from home. Also, more importantly for the symbolism, in both of these encounters the men did this when Odysseus was sleeping, or in his unconscious. They did things that were totally ir shrewd and completely impulse motivated. In the case of Aeolus it was their untrustworthiness and craving for treasure. In the case of Thrinacia it was their luxuria for food, even though they knew that they were not to flagellation the oxen because it belonged to the sun god. These two encounters are good examples of the reason th at Odysseus is not home. They show the constant stru! ggle that Odysseus is going through with his unconscious. He wants very badly to go home only the unreadiness and involuntariness to give up his primeval lust keeps him away from truly coming home. It is that conflict and turmoil that he must forgather peace with before he can come home.          other good example of the men succumbing to their lusts comes when Odysseus and his men encounter Circe. In this encounter one of the main authorships, that is also a reoccurring matter throughout the epic, is the patriarchal instinct of sexual lust. In the encounter with Circe, any man who had sex with Circe was turned into, a pig, a wolf, or a lion.

These three savages can respectively symbolize gluttony, sexual lust, and rage. All of these things are forms of lust, lust for food, lust for sex, and lust for anger. They are all examples of the lust that Odysseus must shed in site to return home. It is a symbol of the repercussions of succumbing to the fauna instinct, those who succumbed to their animal instinct became animals themselves. This incident is the most obvious example of bulls center field showing us the animal lust (because in this adventure the men actually turn into animals) that Odysseus must overcome to come home. The men are a different symbol of the unconscious than the sea because Odysseus must make peace with the sea. However, with Odysseus men, as they begin to die out so do Odysseus primal lusts and it is these primal lusts that blind reason and prevent Odysseus from reemerging into the conscious/light. It is that reason, untainted by primal lus ts, that prevents Odysseus from being killed, and end! ing up in the blaze (again literally and cosmogonically) when he returns home, like Agamemnon was. A smaller but reoccurring event with the men is that when they are killed they always are killed in groups of three. The signifigance of the number three is, as Hans Biedermann describes it in The Dictionary of Symbolism, a symbol of godliness and perfection (Biedermann 240). So to apply that symbolism to Odysseus, every time Odysseus encounters something on his adventures that provokes that primal lust, as all his adventures do, he learns a little and grows more toward perfection. His men confront those primal lusts as they die out so does Odysseus irrationality. As his irrationality is taken away he takes steps toward being able to return home a perfectly rational man that is able to fend off his killers and restore set out to his house.         The final symbolism of all of this comes when Odysseus leaves the island of Ogygia and frees himself from Calypso. This is a time when all of his men are dead and he finally decides on his own that he is ready to return home on his own will. He overcomes his physical lust for Calypso. This is the last thing that he must do. His men are dead and the sea is calm. All of the other symbols of his unconscious struggle have at rest(p) away and become peaceful. The only thing that he must do now is decide for himself that he wants to re-emerge in the world of the conscious/light and return home. When he is on the raft and then naked that is the time when he becomes one with his unconscious and he re-emerges into the world of the light/life/conscious. He re-emerges a new man. His nakedness, nakedness of a baby, and coming out of the water, the unconscious, suggest a rebirth into the world of the light. He is repair a new man and he is now able to go home and not be killed by the suitors. He is now educated and is prepared to truly go home and become the hero. If you want to get a full essay, order it o! n our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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