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Theme Of Love In The Odyssey

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Love, an intense feeling of deep affection. In Homer’s epic The Odyssey, almost all of the main characters do certain actions because of love. Love is a very powerful thing that one cannot see but knows is there and can feel it inside. It is in our lives everyday. In Homer’s epic The Odyssey, a major theme is that love is the force behind everyone's actions.
An example of this theme is how Odysseus really loves and misses his kingdom, Ithaca, so he decides to go back. Odysseus has been away from his wife, family, and kingdom for 20 years. He was originally gone because he had to fight in the Trojan War. Odysseus was blown off course during his return from the Trojan War, and he spent 10 years traveling from island to island attempting to find his way home. “Ithaca / being most lofty in that coastal sea, / and northwest, while the rest lie east and south. / A rocky isle, but good for a boy’s training; / I shall not see on earth a place more dear, / though I have been detained long by Calypso, / loveliest among goddesses, who held me / in her smooth caves, to be her heart’s delight, / as Circe of Aeaea, the enchantress, / desired me, and detained me in her hall, / But in my heart I never gave consent, / where shall a man find sweetness to surpass / his own home and parents? …show more content…

She loves Odysseus and would not do that to him. “She has told them that she is weaving a shroud (a cloth used to wrap a body for burial) for Laertes, her father-in-law. She promises that she will choose a husband when she has completed the work. “So every day I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight I unwove it…” With this simple trick she has deceived her suitors for three years” (Homer 697). Penelope comes up with a lot of ways to say no to the suitors about having affairs with her. By these actions the reader can infer that Penelope will not have affairs with the suitors because she loves Odysseus and no one

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