Since the dawn of man, people have believed that some higher power determines their future. In The Odyssey, the gods have complete dominion over mortals lives. While Telemachus sails to find his father and Odysseus attempts to journey home, the gods influence every event they experience. After Odysseus had journeyed for eighteen days across the endless sea, he caught sight of a distant island hoping to find asylum. Suddenly Poseidon, who hates Odysseus for blinding his son, spots him. Poseidon, god of the sea, sends monstrous waves obstructing his way. Poseidon knows he can’t kill Odysseus because it is against the will of Zeus, so he only destroys his ship. Odysseus swims for two days to the safety of the island in the harshest of storms. He finally collapses on the sand:

A heavy sea covered him over, then and there

 unlucky Odysseus would have met his death

—against the will of fate—

but the bright eyed one inspired him yet again. 

[The Odyssey, Book Five, Lines 479-482]

While Odysseus was close to death, the power of the gods and fate saved him and inspired him to survive. This shows the gods are always looking over us and influencing our fate and future. Odysseus wouldn’t have made it nearly as far.The gods throw hardships at Odysseus and help him out during hard times as well. The gods have a plan for Odysseus even though they can’t see the future. The gods have dominating control over the lives and fate of mortals. Like the gods you can’t decide you fate but you can influence it. 

In life, you can’t just sit on the sidelines. In The Odyssey, one of the main characters, Telemachus, struggles with growing up and facing his problems head on. Telemachus grows up without a father, without someone to lead him on the correct path. He feels lost, unable to face his struggles with confidence. After calling a meeting with the townspeople, hoping to find a solution to the issue of young men, trying to court his mother, draining all of his house’s resources, Telemachus gets up to speak. Tears dripping down his face:

Now we have no man like Odysseus in command to drive this curse from the house...

 A boy inept at battle. 

Oh I’d swing to attack if I had the power in me. 

[The Odyssey, Book II, Lines 63, 66, 67]

 Telemachus feels like he can do nothing in the face of disaster. The suitors that basically live at his house drain his supplies, and he has no options. When the council decides that they will do nothing about his problem, Telemachus takes it into his own hands. Inspired by Athena, he sets off to find his father and rid his house of the suitors. Telemachus if finally growing up and not just sitting idly by. Through the other first four books he becomes more of a man, talking and acting well. Telemachus takes the risk of leaving his mother behind, and finally takes control. The control Telemachus obtains finally makes him an adult, no longer seeing his life pass by him, but experiencing it fully. This added depth of living makes us more mature, and more human.

Hospitality is one of the pillars of showing respect. In Ancient Greece hospitality was a strict code of rules called Xenia. When traveling all around the ancient world, Xenia is what Odysseus relies on, hoping for hospitality from people he has never met. Hospitality is important for the Greeks because they want to appease Zeus. After many days at sea, Odysseus washes up on the coast of an unknown island. He meets a young woman who he doesn’t know and asks her for food and shelter:

But now, seeing you’ve reached our city and our land,

you’ll never lack for clothing or any other gift,

the right of worn-out suppliants come our way.

I’ll show you our town, tell you our people’s name. 

[The Odyssey, Book VI, Lines 210-213]

Even though the princess has never met Odysseus, she shows him respect and hospitality. This was standard practice in Greece at the time. The Gods had put this set of rules in place to help people who were lost and in need of help. Xenia is so important because it’s a common respect between two parties. This respect sets a precedent of kindness that wouldn’t be there in other cultures. The Greeks have a sense of comradeship by just following the same rules of hospitality. Xenia is crucial to Greece, but more specifically The Odyssey. Odysseus wouldn’t be as successful, or even alive, without the kindness of others.

People often look back on the past as simpler times. While I was reading The Odyssey I learned to understand two worlds at once, the world that was thousands of years ago and the world that still affects us today. The Odyssey made me realize that the ancient world had greater similarities to our world than I thought. It taught me lessons that I would have never expected from a book written thousands of years ago. I was first told The Odyssey was one of the greatest books of all time. That was pretty high praise, especially because it was said by every adult who I talked to. When I first started reading, it seemed very average. It was a new writing style and in lines rather than big chunks of text, but other than that, it seemed relatively standard. I did my best to pay attention to the characters and try my best to spot themes. It was only after about six books before I really started to appreciate The Odyssey. When Telemachus first comes to King Nestor’s shores was when I first started seeing the similarities between The Odyssey and our world. The sense of human hospitality was woven into that book, and that’s when I started to feel connected to the characters. They weren’t just some dead people that our English teacher wanted us to pay attention to, they were humans with backstories and emotions. When I started to connect the book back to modern society I understood the book better. I imagine myself in the shoes of the characters and felt like they were feeling. I learned that you can understand someone, even if they’ve been dead for thousands of years. Humans will always be humans, with human emotions and human decisions. Looking back thousands of years, everything seems different, the way people talk and act, the technology, the way of life, but the stories are what makes that time period immortal, and The Odyssey immortal, the ability to tell real, human stories. In the case of The Odyssey, the thing that makes it immortal is the impact it’s had in the current day. The reason it’s so important is not just because of the story or the characters, it’s because of the connection it can make with anyone.

The Odyssey is an important story; it’s an important story that taught us the lessons of self-reliance; it showed us how to show kindness to strangers; it demonstrated the importance of knowing when to respect authority.