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Introduction
The Odyssey is considered one of the first adventure novels in the history of humankind and a kind of encyclopedia of geographical representations of the ancient Greeks. Odysseus, in folk memory, is represented as a famous and even archetypal traveler. However, often readers forget that the legendary king of Ithaca, in fact, was forced to travel. He does not crave any adventures and does not care about distant lands; he just wants to return to his homeland. Nevertheless, the inexorable fate makes so that he is destined for roaming the vast ocean for ten more years (Musarrat et al. 14). He loses all his companions and enters into a confrontation with the gods and unknown creatures. Should he do this all just to return home and state that there is nothing better than his home? However, Odysseus did not doubt it even before his travels. Thus, one of the most important ideas of The Odyssey is that each journey is not just an adventure, but a change in worldview and an overcoming of boundaries.
Travel Mythology
People travel from time immemorial and keep doing it now. Leaving the house, people strive not only for new experiences but also for something elusive. New places and impressions disrupt the measured course of human life, and help people escape the annoying everyday fuss. Perhaps a person is forced to set off on a journey by a natural and primordial desire to change some parts of their destiny. Usually any journey has a goal, and ultimately this goal is to return home, being enriched with impressions and tired of wandering. Undoubtedly, this is not always the case, but for Odysseus, the intent was indeed to return to his native lands.
However, according to the laws of the mythological genre, the hero cannot return home the same as he was, and this is not only a matter of the past years and the impressions received. It would seem that ten years of war under the walls of Troy made him an experienced and wise man. But it takes another ten years of wandering around the sea and unknown lands to get through the obstacles and accomplish feats. Liang states that all the heroes have one thing in common: they are always in the making and the making of them requires heroic qualities, a crowd, and a myth (47). These actions allow Odysseus to change and discover new qualities in himself.
Fate forces Odysseus to leave the familiar homeland and brings him into the places inhabited by fabulous creatures, gods, and monsters. Symbolically, the hero dies in the world of people: everyone considers him dead and composes songs about him. This is evidenced by the symbolism of the Ocean, associated with the Unconscious and some initial Chaos, as well as the loss of a name. Odysseus tells Cyclops Polyphemus: My name is Nobody (Homer, IX, 366). To lose a name means to die and, at the same time, to be born again and get the right to a new life. And all subsequent challenges are only a discovery of oneself and recognition of both oneself and ones companions. Fate in the face of the gods intends Odysseus to descend into the underworld. After that, the hero reaches the world of the gods on the distant island of Trinacria, on the edge of the earth, in a symbolic paradise.
Only after going through challenges, reaching the ends of the earth, overcoming numerous difficulties, Odysseus gets a chance to return home, filled with divine wisdom. He faces the last and most difficult test: to abandon the immortality offered by the beautiful Calypso, preferring mortal life and his native home. Undoubtedly, only a real hero can go this way. Thus, according to The Odyssey, that the real journey must change something in the person himself.
Travel Philosophy
At the end of any journey, in any case, a native home awaits people. Why is Odysseus, having left the gods and rejected immortality, eager to get to his homeland? Usually home and homeland symbolize the deepest essence of a person. This is probably why any trip is, first and foremost, a search for oneself. The best way to know friends better is to go on the road with them. Sometimes leaving the familiar world is the only way to learn a little more about oneself. Before his famous voyage, Odysseus was just one of the Achaean leaders, known for his eloquence and intelligence. But the journey makes him a hero of steadfastness and a wise and experienced man.
Odysseus and his companions are two sides of the same human being, with his virtues and vices. All his wanderings are a story of the confrontation between a reasonable and noble human principle and an animal principle, personified by his companions. His friends lose the memory of their homeland and the purpose of the journey. Due to their curiosity and desire to receive gifts, they die in the cave of Polyphemus. The magic drink of Circe transforms them into those who they are: pigs and other wild animals. Blinded by greed and envy, they are not able to see the signs of fate and use its gifts. The culmination is a violation of the oath given to Odysseus and sacrilege when his companions kill and eat the sacred bulls of Helios.
Stages of travel symbolize the heros struggle with his gluttony, greed, and animal instincts. As the opposite of his companions, Odysseus is a personification of rationality and wisdom. He finds a way out of the cave of Polyphemus, descends into Hades, and returns to the earth unharmed. He is the only one of all people who can listen to the singing of sirens. According to Nikolovska, the sirens represent regression, instead of improving and moving forward in ones life (32). However, Odysseus is firmly attached to the axis of the ship, symbolizing the spiritual principle and consciousness. At the end of his journey, he remains alone, gradually losing all of his comrades. According to the plan of the gods, Odysseus should return home alone, without the help of the gods and people. He comes home unrecognized by anyone, and that is how it should be. He is already a new person, not the one who went on a journey twenty years earlier.
Travel Anthropology
Probably, everyone at least once experienced, returning home from a trip, a strange feeling that the real home was in the starting point of the travel. Leaving their usual places, people, like Odysseus, find themselves in a strange world, living according to its incomprehensible laws. Every time, setting off on a journey, people go beyond the usual and encounter the unknown (Treu, 2017, p. 102). That is one of the reasons why epics of all times inhabited uncharted lands with fabulous creatures and monsters.
Even at the end of the 15th century, Columbus sailors, furrowing the waters of an unknown ocean, expected to meet mermaids and other monsters. In addition to the natural fear of being lost in the sea, they had to overcome an irrational fear of the unknown. However, eventually, their journey allowed them to create new maps. They expanded the boundaries of the well-known and familiar places, as well as Odysseus did. During a travel, the borders of their world also get more extensive. In their lives, there are new locations and new people which become known instead of being strange and alien.
Conclusion
For many subsequent generations, Odysseus became the archetype of the traveler and the hero of modern times. After the Trojan War, the greatest and most famous heroes either perished or sunk into obscurity. Myths tell only about Odysseus and Aeneas, who were traveling. One of them is looking for a home, and the other wants to revive Troy. Both of them become a kind of model for the future people. Having gained wisdom and explored life in long wanderings, they become people over whom the divine fate is no longer in power. They overcome the impossible and create their lives with their hands. These are the ideals of future masters and philosophers and all those who are not afraid to challenge fate, who can go beyond the ordinary. Therefore, the hero does not have to go on a long journey in search of adventure: his journey is the ability to overcome the boundaries of himself. As a result, his whole life becomes a journey.
Works Cited
Homer. The Odyssey. W. W Norton & Company. 2017.
Liang, Meng. The Making of Odysseus the Hero in Homers Odyssey. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, vol. 6, no.7, 2017, pp. 43-47.
Musarrat, Maria, et al. A Socio-Cultural Study of the Odyssey by Homer and the Odyssey by Usman Ali: A Comparative Analysis. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature, vol. 5, no. 1, 2017, pp. 13-22.
Nikolovska, Vanessa. The Natures of Monsters and Heroes. The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research, vol. 16, no. 1, 2015, pp. 26-35.
Treu, Martina. Ulyssess Journey and Homers Odyssey: An Eternal Return. Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, pp. 102-122.
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