God and Godess Characters in the Odyssey
God and Godess Characters in the Odyssey
Circe and Calypso are goddesses and both keep Odysseus in their home, their personalities different, yet they both help Odysseus arrive home faster. Calypso and Circe are both goddesses who wish to make Odysseus their lord. Circe has the powers of a witch, while Calypso yields no such powers. Odysseus overcomes Circe by a show of force, while Calypso is defeated only when Athena pleads the case of Odysseus. The one thing they have in common was that they both fall in love with Odysseus and want him to stay with them. "Neither of them could win the heart within me; for nothing is sweeter to a man than his native country. Even though he were given a sumptuous dwelling-place; in a strange land far away." Odysseus yearns for his homeland, and his faithful wife. Even though Circe wants Odysseus to stay, she said, “I would not have you remain in my house unwillingly." Now after she says this, she tells Odysseus to seek the blind prophet Tiresias’ help in the Underworld. Without the prophet’s help it would have taken Odysseus a lot longer to reach his homeland, Ithaca. "I have slept enough; it is time to go-Lady Circe has shown me how and where." Here, Odysseus shows his anxiety in reaching his homeland. Circe helps Odysseus get home faster, willingly. In Calypso’s case she does not want Odysseus to leave. “…If you knew the troubles you will have before you get to Ithaca, you would stay where you are and keep this house with me, and be immortal…” Calypso tells Odysseus that if he stays with her, that she will make him immortal, but he refuses. She helps him build a raft and supplies him with food for his journey, making his journey easier. Both goddesses treat Odysseus differently and in result, their actions help him. In either case, if Odysseus gives in, he will become an immortal nobody. He chooses to become an immortal in the tales of his deeds. Calypso was more effective than Circe because when Odysseus arrived he had lost all his men. Calypso, like Helen, serves to define femininity as a sex-object mainly in terms of masculine desires. The name Calypso means the concealer and she represents the forces that cause a man to be diverted from his goal. She may be the symbol of a cult that...