Homer’s “The Odyssey” explores the theme of family especially through the main character, Odysseus and his family. The Odysseus family was a nuclear family consisting of Odysseus, Penelope, his wife and their son Telemachus. Imagine being born to a family whose head is a hero. It is obvious that you will be under pressure to keep up with the expectation of the society on your family as well as trying to maintain the honor and reputation of the family. This is exactly the kind of pressure Penelope, Odysseus wife and Telemachus, their only son have with Odysseus being a Greek hero. Just like a royal family they are a subject of attention everywhere they go and anything they do. This explains Homer choses to make the Odysseus family his main subject of interest in developing his epic poem.
Thesis: Being brought up in a royal family such as the Odysseus family comes with a lot of responsibility, your actions do not just affect you, it affects other members of the family as well as the honor and reputation of the entire family.
Since Odysseus is perceived to have died during the Trojan war, Penelope and Telemachus suffer the pressure of having to entertain suitors who are seeking Penelope’s hand in marriage. It took Odysseus twenty years before he could return and any other woman would have succumbed to the pressure and get married to another man. Despite Penelope facing this kind of pressure, she chooses to be loyal to his husband and uses tricks to entice the suitors to wait a little longer before she could choose one of them to take hand in marriage. Telemachus also suffers the pressure of being a son of Greek hero, the suitors do not spare him of the pressure either as they saw him as an obstacle to their quest to marry his mother. Some of the suitors were even planning to eliminate him so as to have their way.
Odysseus also suffered the pressure of trying to balance between being a family man and a Greek hero. As much as he loved his community and would lead in wars to protect it, he also had the responsibility of protecting and taking care of his family. After his disappearance when the Trojan war came to an end, he tried to find his way home to his family though it took him too long to finally re-unite with his family. He was suffering from the pressure of whether or not is family would accept him back after is disappearance. He would constantly think of his family, he knew he da left a young family that really needed his care and protection especially his son who was a young child when he left for the war. Upon his return to Ithaca he is faced with yet another uncommon pressure, trying to prove he was really Odysseus.
Odysseus’s relationship with his wife was really intimate that is why it was able to survive the storms of time and pressure until Odysseus returns after twenty years of his disappearance. However, Telemachus was not proud of his father’s actions in fact, at some point he wished his father had died during the war to relieve them of the pressure of speculating whether he had died or he was alive. On the other hand, Odysseus really loved his son in fact, all his journey back home, he was yearning to return and take care of his son whom he believed was in danger and needed his protection.
In relation to other families, Homer portrays Odysseus’s family just like any other modern family though in an Ancient Greek context. Other families lacked the kind of the normal structure of a nuclear family as Odysseus’s family had since most of the other families comprised a god or a goddess and though they had descendants, they would also inherit the supernatural nature. A good example is the character Circe, although we are told that she was a descendant of Helios and Perse, she did not live a normal human line as she was a sorceress. In fact, she was yearning to have a family just like Odysseus’s which explains why she tried to seduce Odysseus and captured him with his men.
The Odysseus family’s relationship with other families was cordial and based on mutual respect. A good example is the family of Eumaeus which shared a good relationship with the family of Odysseus. In fact, it is Eumaeus who welcomed Odysseus back after his return and offered shelter and food to Odysseus. The family of Odysseus related well with the community since Odysseus was respected as the community’s hero as he showed he had the interests of the community at heart by risking his life to participate in the Trojan war in order to ensure peace prevails in his community.
In a nutshell, the being a hero or a descendant of a hero bestows a lot of pressure not only on oneself but on his or her family. This is portrayed in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” which revolves around a Greek hero, Odysseus who suffers the pressure of having the responsibility of taking care of his family as well as his community. His family equally suffer the consequences of his decisions as they also suffer immense pressure when Odysseus disappears after his participation in the Trojan war.
