Maturity of Odysseus

Have you ever been immature at the start of a big event then at the end become very mature? If you have then you are just like Odysseus in the Odyssey, very immature and made lots of mistakes at the beginning but then at the end lets go of his major pride and submits to the gods’ wishes. One summer my Mother and sister went to Romania on a mission’s trip, so my brothers were sent to stay at a friends and I flew to Arizona from Wyoming to stay with some other friends. I was twelve years old and thought I was mature but over time my view changed. I was in charge of talking to my brothers miles away since my mother wouldn’t be able to talk to them. Also, the friends that I was staying with were newlyweds and very unstable. This being my first time so far away from home and no one to talk to I started freaking out. I had an aunt and uncle that lived in Scottsdale so I tried to stay with her as much as possible. My friends weren’t so excited about that because they wanted me to stay with them, but when I was with them I couldn’t eat because of the stress. So over the two weeks that I was gone I became very mature from juggling all of that stress. In the same way Odysseus in the Epic poem The Odyssey becomes very mature from his troubles that he has to overcome. With all of the temptations lurking around Odysseus he can’t refuse them all but over the next twenty years he matures.

In the first part of the Epic Poem The Odyssey Odysseus is very immature. Odysseus is very prideful and self-centered.

“This fame has gone abroad to the sky’s rim”

Odysseus is so sure that he is this amazing character that he is saying his fame is so big that even the gods are watching him. At the Cyclops’s island Odysseus’ curiosity gets in the way of escaping the island without harm.

“My men came pressing round me, pleading

�why not

take these cheeses, get them stowed, come back, throw open all the pens, and make a run for it? … Yet I refused, I wished

to see the cave man, what he had to offer –

no pretty sight, it turned out, for my friends.”

Odysseus did not listen to the pleading of his men but instead submitted to his own curiosity, which ended up killing some of his shipmates. Odysseus’ anger and ego with the Cyclops cursing the rest of his trip home and killing all of his men.

“I would not heed them in my glorying spirit,

but let my anger flare and yelled:

�Cyclops,

if ever a mortal man inquire

how you