Immortality In The Odyssey

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Immortality is the ability to live forever, and only the gods and goddesses are immortals. They are also ageless. Reading the story of great warriors from Iliad, immortality seems to be crucial in ancient Greek society as all mortals in the hope of becoming immortals, would involve in courageous work like war. For example, Hector felt he would be immortals if he participates to save his father’s land Troy. In Odyssey, Calypso, a daughter of Atlas, is a powerful and immortal goddess, and she lives in a dark wooded island. When Odysseus reaches that island, she saves him and keeps him in her island by proving everything he needs like ruddy wine, food and cloak. Calypso, a beautiful goddess, falls in love with him and wants to marry him. Enthusiastically, she wants to provide him immortality and painless life. Odysseus would have a beautiful wife like …show more content…
When Calypso made him free of her island, Odysseus was excited to return his homeland. She alerts Odysseus about the upcoming painful journey, “But if you knew, down deep, what pains are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore, you’d say right here, preside in our house wife me and be immortal.”, even by prophesying that, she could not stop him. Instead, Odysseus replied her, “Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—to travel home and see the dawn of my return. And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea, I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure. Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now in the waves and wars. Add this to the total—bring the trial on!” He is prepared to endure any pains in his journey, if he can return his island. Not only Calypso, he also refuses goddess Circe and princess Nausicaa on the way to his home. What does Odysseus want in his life and why did he abandon Calypso, a beautiful goddess, and her offerings like immortality and power, and choose to return home even enduring enormous
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