Calypso and Circe, Important Women of Homers Odyssey :: Homer Odyssey womody

Calypso and Circe, Important Wo men of Homers OdysseyOf all the themes in the Odyssey, the one that seems to stand away is Odysseuss struggle to return home. There are many reasons why his transit is deterred, the most obvious being the women he encounters. Of the women, their are two that truly represent the different aspects of creative and destructive feminiinty. (Taylor, 571)Calypso is a char who carries the true appeal of a woman, beauty. She offers Odysseus eternal life, and an end to physical suffering. With her, he will be able to keep his identity as a man and enjoy the different pleasures she can offer. She seems like the most enticing offer for Odysseus besides his wife, but he denies her offer. Odysseus refuses Calypsos offer of bodily immortality for the equivalent reasons that he resists bodily death in neither case could be preserve his whole being as Odysseus. (Taylor, 571)I found his refusal to be kind of commendable, though his excuse was not. Circes charms are to a fault directed towards the same place, but not as blatently as Calypsos. She drugs Odysseuss men to make them entrust their homes and then she turns them into pigs. Taylor describes this sequence of events as significant because it represents the metamorphosis as a collary of forgetting ones native land. The transformation of man to animal is a vivid simulacrum of the lessening of human consciousness which forgetting ones origings implies. (Taylor, 572) He also states that the story suggests that men who let themselves be drugged into a lower level of sentience by the destructive power of the enchantress, become no more than animals to be kept as the womans pet. (Taylor, 572)I found this quote to be quite interesting. It made me think of how this could relate to our own societies fallen men and also women. Many people today consume alcohol or unskilled drugs and let it control their actions, even though if they were sober, they would not be behaving this way. Our ordin ation today is weak, just like in the story, to different potions that can reach their mental capacity to think straight.