Odyseey (16-24)

I like how supposedly glorious it is when Odysseus comes back without the disguise, as himself. I found it slightly funny as well.

I never realized how much power the suitors have. Odysseus is acting as though they are an army of his enemy, not just men beneath him. I thought he could kick them out whenever he wanted, or whenever he returned, because isn't that what Penelope and his people were waiting for? Isn't that why Penelope never married? It doesn't make sense for it to be so hard to return where people want you, for Odysseus's situation, at least.

I like Amphinomus. Though the suitors are looked on as terrible and manipulative, I didn't absolutely hate him, and favor him among the suiters. He just seems like a cool suitor.

Odysseus's plan is clever (disguising himself) but he's not so great at getting passed the suitors, because he keeps getting beat up on the way.

See? Even Odysseus likes Amphinomus, shown when Odysseus warns him to leave because Penelope's husband will be back.

I can't believe Penelope doesn't recognize her husband! You'd think she would, because they were married. It reminds me of this movie where this mother was like, I can recognize any child or grandchild of mine. Then, her daughter-in-law cheats on her husband, but tells the mother that the baby is her son's baby (her real grandchild), and the mother says, Yes, this is my grandchild, he looks just like his father.
But she was wrong.
Anyway, thinking about Penelope, and what a lump she is, it makes me so frustrated that she doesn't know and that Odysseus doesn't tell her because I know, as the reader. And I thought, it might be really cool if the author didn't even share with the reader that Odysseus was the beggar.

Yes I know that Athena loves disguises and is good at them herself, but why is she encouraging this disguise for so long? Odysseus should just tell Penelope and make the suitors leave.

Why does Penelope still want to remarry a suitor even when she has just heard that her husband will be back in a month? Hasn't she been waiting long enough for him? And now she's ready to give up?

With the eagles and talons and doves and bloody walls, I keep thinking of the 10 plagues, and how the suitors were warned, but they refuse to listen.

Why did Odysseus still feel the need to shoot someone with an arrow? And then commence his slaughter of the suitors? WHEN Penelope said she would marry the man that could string the bow and shoot through the axes? Wouldn't she just have married him and all the suitors went home? Because I thought it was a great twist to the story, and Odysseus could have spared himself the murders.

First he orders Eurycleia to be quite ("Keep your joy in your heart, woman") though she had been the one to raise him, and that is no way to speak to her, then he says "It is not decent to boast over slain men." First of all, he was the one that killed them, which was unnecessary, second, he boasts about the disturbing deeds he's done. For example, blinding a cyclopes, which was also unnecessary.

Isn't that kind of unreasonable- killing the "disgraceful" women of the house? It's Penelope's fault for giving them free run of the house and for letting the suitors stay, and isn't the women's fault for mingling with them.

Ok, Odysseus and Telemachus are sadistic and heartless and inhumane and psychotic. They seem almost worse than the suitors, maybe they are worse, shown after what they did to the servant women and Melanthius. Then Odysseus has the house fumigated, as if it were just some common thing, and that what had just happened was insignificant.

Does Odysseus find it funny, when he tricks people with his disguises? Even his own father, who has been grieving his son's absence for all these years?

Athena could have totally put a stop to the violence that Odysseus caused when he killed all of the suitors, and her ability to do so is shown when she stops a fight between the parents and Odysseus.