to choose a new husband. She sits in her room all day and she weeps and weeps for Odysseuss return: Sill with her child indeed she is, poor heart,/ still in your palace hall. Forlorn her nights/ and days go by, her life used up in weeping. (Book XI, 204-206). Although Odysseus is out playing hero for many, within his internal environment, he is causing sever damage. The pain and damage that he has caused however, is not limited to just his wife and his child. Odysseus also has harmed his mother and his father. The emotional damage that Odysseus has done to his mother, is so extensive that she dies not of an illness but of loneliness: ...not that illness overtook me---no true illnesswasting the body to undo the spirit;only my loneliness for you, Odysseus,for your kind heart and counsel, gentle Odysseus,took my own life away. (Book XI, 123 - 127).Odysseus also damaged his father emotionally. After Odysseus left, he no longer held his disposition of a king and began to fall into a state of depression. When Odysseus goes to the underworld, his mother tell him:But your fatheris country bound and comes to town no more.He owns no bedding, rugs, or fleecy mantles,but lies down, winter nights, among the slaves,rolled in old cloaks for cover, near the embers.Or when the heat comes at the end of summer,the fallen leaves, all around his vineyard plot,heaped into windrows, make his lowly bed.He lies now even so, with aching heart,and longs for your return, while age comes on him. (Book XI, 210-219).The intimate damage that Odysseus has done is so extensive that he has caused depression, and even death.When Odysseus reaches Troy, he becomes hero to one segment of the population, but will always remain a destroyer to another segment of the population. To his fellow warriors, he is a hero for his strategy in defeating the trojans: And as to stratagems, no man would claim/ Odysseus gift for those. He had no rivals,/ your father, at the tr...
