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Loyalty In Homer's Odyssey

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Loyalty In Homer's Odyssey
Paul Salamy
Mrs. Ebersole
English 10 Honors
21 August 2012
Thesis: The final part in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, expresses the importance of loyalty as well as the issues caused by trust being ignored due to ignorant attitudes.

I. Odysseus’s close friends and family were the ones who were most loyal to him, as they mourned his absence and longed for his return back home. a. Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, although her faith was slowly growing dim, for a very long time believed that her beloved husband Odysseus would return to her and their son. i. Penelope was determined to delay choosing a suitor because she was hopeful that her husband Odysseus would come home and the suitors would no longer try to come anywhere near Penelope again. …show more content…
“ Young men, my suitors, now my lord is dead , let me finish my weaving before I marry, or else my thread will have been spun in vain”(Homer XIX 168-169) ii. Penelope did not on finishing her weaving, she would weave all day and then at night secretly she would unweave all the work she had done. 2. “ Everyday I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight I unwove it; and so for three years I deceived the Akhains” ( Homer XIX 175-177) iii. Penelope did truly miss her husband Odysseus; “ she wept for Odysseus, her husband, till Athena cast sweet sleep upon her eyes” ( Homer XIX 697-699) b. The old nurse, Eurykleia, was very loyal to Odysseus, recognizing him by the scar he had. iv. “Oh Yes! You Are Odysseus! Ah, dear child! I could not see you until now-not till I knew my master’s very body with my hands!”(Homer XIX
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