Importance Of Home And Family In Homer's The Odyssey

829 Words4 Pages
Odyssey Essay In The Odyssey, there are many lessons that can be learned. Three major examples are the importance of home and family, the need for respect, courage, trust, and discipline, and how intelligence can be more important than the size or amount of an opponent. Homer did an excellent job of representing these morals through the tales of Odysseus. The first lesson, of the importance of home and family, is seen in almost every book of the textbook version of the Odyssey. On a few occasions, Odysseus’s men’s curiosity gets the best of them. They ignore their leaders warnings and go on to do things that in the end, get them killed or delay them even more from getting home. One example of this is when Odysseus told his men not to…show more content…
Undoubtedly without Odysseus’s extreme level of intelligence, they would never have even escaped the Cyclops. If he had let his men kill the Cyclops, they would have died in the cave because they would not have been able to move the rock that blocked the doorway. After, if he had not blinded the Cyclops before trying to escape with the sheep, the Cyclops would have most likely found them. Also, if he gave away his real name, instead of Nobody, then the Cyclops would have told his friends when they came to the cave and they most likely would have entered the cave and killed Odysseus and his men. Another example from that story in which his intelligence proved to be important was when he devised the plan to escape with the sheep so the Cyclops would not detect them. Simply because of the Cyclops size and the power he had over them to keep them locked up, he should have had full control over Odysseus and his men. Instead, Homer showed through this story that intelligence, represented in Odysseus, can be more powerful than physical size or an advantage in a situation, represented by the great size of the Cyclops. What Homer was trying to get across was the importance of morals such as the importance of family and home, the need for respect, courage, trust, and discipline, as well as the advantage to having intelligence. He clearly displayed all of these points in several occasions throughout the story. There is a lot to be learned in this book, and in every way is it a good and positive
Open Document