The Odyssey on a Heroic Journey Essay

Submitted By jachhhh
Words: 448
Pages: 2

A heroic journey is one full of hardships, growth, and passage—these are only a few characteristics depicted in each of the three stages of the adventure. Initially, it begins with departure; the hero first steps out of his familiarity and into the unknown. The second stage, initiation, follows with a series of trials that test the hero’s physical and mental ability while stimulating growth in his character, ultimately leading to the return. The return is the last stage, where the hero has received a “boon”, or reward, and returns back to his home either easily or also with difficulty. Homer’s The Odyssey, a representation of this “hero’s journey”, illustrates the phases in these stages exactly. The first connection made between the epic and Heroic Journey is their Departure. In the first phase “Call to Adventure”, The Odyssey’s hero Odysseus is indeed called to an adventure when a war is decided after the handsome Helen, wife of the Spartan Menelaus, is abducted by Paris. (The second likeness appears when Odysseus, living graciously with a newborn son, feigns insanity as an escape from battle but is discovered and recruited. A continuation of mirrored phases restarts when he “Crosses the First Threshold” and enters the “Belly of the Whale” by leaving his peaceful home Ithaca and going into war. The second phase is projected in their adventure with the Cyclopes Polyphemus, where they face the large terror in his cave. These resemblances are what proves heroic journey in the beginning of The Odyssey. Once the war is over, the journey and the epic continue to align in second stage Initiation. Starting with the first phase, “The Road of Trials” is represented through the…