The Birth of the Gods in Homers Odyssey - 1548 Words

The Birth of the Gods in The Odyssey Prehistoric man did not question his existence and reality - he just lived as one with nature. When prehistoric man awakened from this simple existence into the world of intelligence, he began to question his existence and reality. Homer’s The Odyssey demonstrated man’s attempt to cope with their own nature through the illusion of the gods, by using them to carry their burdens of hopelessness, helplessness, and fallibility. The characters of Homer’s The Odyssey struggled with the ineffable reality of the world, therefore they created gods that could carry the burden of their hopeless quest for understanding. The characters created by Homer, because of their intelligence, were finally†¦show more content†¦This sense of control through appeasement helped Homer’s characters cope with their helplessness and carry on trying to survive. Through the personification of the forces or in other words gods, Homer’s characters helped themselves feel more connected with both mortal and immortal worlds. Humans straddled two worlds, that of the animals and that of the gods. Homer’s humans came from the world of the animals a world of a non-questioning existence, and these humans were striving to reach the world of the gods in which lay the understanding of their inconceivable existence. By personifying the governing forces of both animals and humans, Homer’s characters were creating a link to both animals and gods, for the ...[gods’] power is over all(140) . The gods helped the characters in The Odyssey feel comfortable with their position in between two worlds. The belief in polytheism not only linked gods, humans, and animals but also justified people’s contradicting prayers to the gods, and the differing outcomes of these prayers. Naturally different characters had different needs, therefore each person’s prayers to the gods differed, but there could be only one outcome. Homers people in an attempt to understand these contradicting outcomes invented the idea that for each different desire there was a different god, and when two contradicting prayers where made, two different gods decided the outcome. 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