Respect Of The Gods In The Odyssey

Odyssey Essay

When his two nearest companions pulled away his clothes and looked at his neck, they had said him a solemn farewell in expectation of his death. We'll meet again in a better world, they said. He was classed among the dying and put aside on a cot to do so. But he failed at it. After two days, space being short, they sent him on to a regular hospital in his own state. All through the mess of the field hospital and the long grim train ride south in a boxcar filled with wounded, he had agreed with his friends and the doctors. He thought he would die. About all he could remember of the trip was the heat and the odors of blood and of shit, for many of the wounded had the flux. (Frazier, 4)

Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain opens with an intelligent and reserved confederate soldier named Inman lying in a Virginia hospital bed recovering from war wounds. Shattered by the violence he has witnessed while fighting in the Confederate army, Inman escapes from the Confederate hospital and journeys to his home on Cold Mountain so that he may reunite with his lover, Ada. Throughout his journey, Inman is chased by the Home Guard, drugged, shot, and dragged out of a grave by wild hogs. Just as Inman from Cold Mountain faces many troubles and setbacks on his journey home to Ada, Odysseus from Homer's epic The Odyssey faces many hardships on his journey to Ithaka. However, unlike Inman, Odysseus survives his hardships. He escapes from his duress on Kalypso's island and ventures to return to his lover, Penelope, in Ithaka, despite being warned that he was to "undergo [hardships] before getting back to [his] country" (5.12.206). Throughout his quest, Odysseus courageously and audaciously faces Helios, Zeus, the ferocious Polyphemos, and the Earth Shaker, Poseidon. In instances where Odysseus provokes the gods, Homer illustrates the inevitability of hardship on a journey.

Though he is adored by gods such as Zeus and Athena, Odysseus and his cronies occasionally overstep their boundaries as mortals. His crew knowingly disrespects the sun god Helios Hyperion by killing his livestock, and is severely castigated. As he journeys to Ithaka, Circe warns Odysseus of "the island Thrinakia, where pastured the cattle and the fat sheep of the sun god, Helios, seven herds of oxen, and as many beautiful sheepflocks and fifty to each herd"(12.9.127-130). She tells Odysseus "if you harm [Helios' sheep and horn-curved cattle], then I testify to the destruction of your ship and your companions, but if you get yourself clear, you will come home in bad case with the loss of all your companions" (12.9.139-141). Concerned about Circe's grim prophecies, Odysseus orders his companions to "avoid the island of Helios who brings joy to mortals" and to "drive the black ship onward, and pass the island" (12.274-276). However, due to the possibility of an oncoming storm, Odysseus' companions persuade him to allow the ship to be docked on Thrinakia, contingent upon the crew's oath that "no one in evil and reckless action will slaughter any ox or sheep" (12.300). Unfortunately, "Eurylochos put an evil counsel before his companions"; he tells the crew that "hunger is the sorriest way to die and encounter faith" (12.342), thereby persuading the crew to slay Helios Hyperion's livestock. Eurylochos manifests that he knows "slaughtering the oxen and skinning them" (12.359) is an act that would infuriate the sun god when he tells his companions that if Helios "in anger over his high-horned cattle, wishes to wreck [their] ship, and the rest of the gods stand by [the sun god], [he] would far rather gulp the waves and lose [his] life in them once for all, than be pinched to death on [Helios'] desolate island" (12.348-351). Unfortunately, the crew acts upon Eurylochos' words and temerity; they "cut out the best of Helios' cattle" (12.343). Helios vexed, he asks that Zeus "punish the companions of Odysseus" (12.378) because "they outrageously killed [his] cattle, in whom [he] always delighted" (12.379). Zeus promises to "strike [Odysseus'] men's fast ship on the open wine-blue sea with