What makes the Odyssey so important to human communities in today’s community? The importance in “The Odyssey” creates an impact in our community helps us gain knowledge, understand Greek civilization, and women’s role leading one to believe it’s considered valuable in the real world today. As students ourselves, we read the “The Odyssey” because we are assigned to read Greek Mythology specifically for a school assignment. It’s not only for school, but the first novel that generally gives us a perspective on Western literature and the principals of fantasy enhances our imagination. Moreover, the overall moral of the story is describing visual images in our head as a way to view what is happening in the text.
To begin with, “The Odyssey” has helped us develop new knowledge and has challenged our reading skills, especially in complex texts. Reading a complex text can be challenging in a new way to help us think critically to understand their language since it’s completely different from reading a modern book. Additionally, “The Odyssey” is an adventurous story that is generally is read as a moral tale. With this in mind, the most challenging obstacle about reading Greek Mythology is memorizing the number of characters, including the new ones that were introduced throughout the story, which can be quite difficult to keep track of. However, the language should be kept originally the way it was to give us a sense of ancient history. I believe it’s interesting to read an ancient text because it gives us a sense of what we have with ancient people from a completely different culture back in their day. Learning from new experiences in the text would be helpful to find new meanings throughout the reading in the text.
Together with Greek civilization, it beneficially helps us understand the world in order to survive the difficult journey. In “The Odyssey”, it introduces the many aspects of Ancient Greek such as their culture, characteristic traits, and the plot throughout the story. On ancient Greek civilization, they had to bravely risk their own lives into leaving their own homeplace. Imagine what it would be from their perspective during their time when they didn’t have any technology for their own convenience. Individuals back in the day had to navigate their directions on the map by drawing it out from moving one place to another to reach their final destination. After they left their homeplace, they had encountered strange people around them, but it taught them about Greece’s custom. Correspondingly, the religious belief of ancient Greek culture had tough restrictions. Greek society tends to believe that the whole world is being watched by the gods and seems to be controlling over Odysseus’s future. Another key point Homer address is the many aspects of ancient Greece such as their history, pride, values, and customs. The primary importance focuses on how their culture works out. For instance, Odysseus’s expectation is that he wants the guest, visitors, or strangers to greet him with a warm welcome along with gifts at his place since he is the hero. It is part of the Greek tradition and their rules of polite behavior in society on how people are expected to behave. In addition, Odysseus has come to understand how their customs work on the various types of people he experienced throughout his long threatening journey back home to Ithaca. On the negative side recalling back on the event when Polyphemus ate two of Odysseus’s men during their escape plan after he invited them at his cave at home. He nearly disobeyed one of the rules in the ancient Greek culture for treating his guest with disrespect. As a result, violating their culture can be insulting towards other gods and causes a bad reputation on himself for his own actions. Also, ancient Greek culture was generally influenced by mythology in terms of gods and goddesses. To point out, the moral lessons in the characteristics of ancient Greeks values loyalty, learning to control ourselves, and always having faith despite the difficulty in achieving success. For example, Eumaeus is the most loyal person swineherd helped Odysseus defeat the suitors at his palace while Penelope kept her hope that he is still alive and will return home safely at one peace. The overall epic allows Greek values and culture to tell us that it can be passed down from one generation to the next to keep the tradition going in life.
All women in “The Odyssey” are unique and play a significant role that is important to the development of success that helped Odysseus with his journey from the Trojan war thanks to the help from women. Females should be treated with respect and be acknowledged for their hard working effort. Athena is the goddess of having good judgment who embodies bravery and is also the most important character. She is the one in charge of the battle and truly understands Odysseus’s struggle on the difficulty he went through in the Trojan War that led him home safely. For Penelope, she had certain restrictions since she wasn’t allowed to share the same marriage bed with her husband. For fear that Odysseus demanded his suitors and told Telemachus by threatening to kill the female slaves for those who slept with them is a terrifying situation. In fact, society in ancient Greece has pointed out the stereotypes directly towards women. There were expectations being set against women on how they’re expected to have jobs they must fulfill that is appropriate for their gender. Not to mention, Telemachus ordered Penelope to work on the fabric and maintain household jobs since he believes it’s the females the job that suits her. He also believes that women have a minimum amount of power and strength in society, viewing her as “weak”. You shouldn’t let gender roles label you as an individual. Women are not labeled as stereotypes, we can make a better change in our world for the better if we allowed ourselves our ideas to be heard before having the evidence for its usefulness. For the purpose, women acquire its own unique abilities along with their personality trait.
For the most part, we learn the special importance on the values of new experiences in our lifetime can help us find new meaning when we read a complex text in “The Odyssey”. To point out, it has truly taught us about how to survive in life and understand how society works in Greek civilization. By all means, it’s all about the journey and showing compassion for each other. Even though if we go through our lowest point during the most difficult times, it still doesn’t stop Odysseus from returning home safely at Ithaca coming back as a much stronger person than he was before. Most importantly, the text on ancient Greek culture created a significant impact that influenced today’s society.
