Binzaman
Global Litearture
Sadman Binzaman
X02053661
Temptation at its Limit
Homer’s storytelling was geared towards a patriarchal society, whereby men are the decision-makers and hold positions of power and prestige, and have the power to define reality and common situations. It is a society that tends to hold contempt for women and where women were expected to possess certain traits and perform certain tasks that men demanded of them. While Homer endorsed the dominating belief of his time by treating his female characters with partiality compared to their male counterparts, in the Odyssey, he identifies them additionally as temptresses. Similar in nature to a rose, with its incredible beauty and fragrance the rose is able to lure in unsuspecting victims, but the rose has thorns which show that it too can become a dangerous encounter. In turn a temptress, because of her beauty and manipulating ways, acts as a distraction in the protagonist's life, she is the reason for his downfall because she tempts the Hero to turn away from his goals, hopes, and dreams and makes him weak.
The theme of temptation in the form of women appears throughout the poem. After much agony at sea, Odysseus finds himself on the doorsteps of Circe. Circe is a temptress who proves that conquering sometimes just involves a show of force. To us she looks like a beautiful witch, but it is important to remember that she is not. She is, according to Homer, a goddess. In the Odyssey (book X) the encounter between her and Odysseus’s men is described: "She gave them all comfortable seats…but she put dangerous drugs in the mess, to make them wholly forget their native land. When once they had swallowed it, she gave them a tap of her wand at once and herded them into pens; for they now had pig heads and grunts and bristles, pigs all over except that their minds were the same as before.” When her tricks failed to work on Odysseus, she lured him into her chamber, having man give into the temptation of woman. Her continued use of the feminine charm keeps Odysseus and his men on her island for one year, feasting and drinking wine.