Odysseus Return Home In Homer's The Odyssey

In The Odyssey, Odysseus’ Nostos, return home, is more theatrical and elaborate than it should be. His return home, however, is not as glamorous as he thought it would be, with all of the suitors trying to win over his wife. He spends a great deal of time plotting vengeance of the suitors. Odysseus is determined to purify his home of all unloyalties and regain control over his kingdom. This results in a barbaric slaughter of innocent foreigners and citizens of Ithaca. Odysseus’ central goal is to avenge the suitors, however the slaughter gets out of control and becomes evident in the extreme imagery used in the epic poem.
The king starts killing everyone in his path and shows no mercy for anyone. He kills the first person that asks for mercy, but when the bard comes, Telemachus keeps Odysseus from killing him, as well as the herald. “The inspired Prince Telemachus heard his pleas and quickly said to his father close beside him, “Stop, don’t cut him down! this one’s innocent. So is the herald Medon-the one who always tended to me in the house when I was little-spare him too. Unless he’s dead by now, killed by Philoetius or Eumaeus here- or ran into you rampaging through the halls” (22. 374-381). The imagery displays the panic in Telemachus’ voice when calling out to his father not to kill the two men. When Telemachus says, “So is the herald Medon-the one who always tending to me in the house when I was little-spare him too”, the imagery senses that Medon holds a fatherlike position to Telemachus while he grew up and Odysseus was gone. The way he says “or ran into you rampaging through the halls”, makes it sound as if Telemachus is slightly mad at the amount of people he cared dying to his father’s hands. To Odysseus, they are just servants because he does not have a surviving relationship with them because of his departure for 20 years. But to Telemachus, they are people that care for him and he grew up with their
In the beginning, it is clear that he wants to make the palace pure again, but attacking women takes the whole situation to the next level. Odysseus tells his son, Telemachus, to bring out all of the maids so that he can decide who he shall slaughter. Odysseus decides that chopping the women into pieces, an already brutal punishment, is too forgiving, so he insists on hanging the women. “So the women’s heads were trapped in line, nooses yanking their necks up, one by one so all might die a pitiful, ghastly death. . . they kicked up heels for a little -- not for long” (22.497-500). When Fagles says “so all might die a pitiful, ghastly death” it shows the listener that Odysseus’s desire is to intentionally bring pain upon the women although his primary target is the suitors. When Fagles says “nooses yanking their necks up, one by one” it brings strong imagery to show how violently Odysseus concludes to kill the women in Ithaca. The imagery helps the listener interpret the scene in their mind and imagine exactly how this event may have taken place. In this case, imagery shows the reader how cruel and careless Odysseus is while murdering the women in Ithaca.
Odysseus’ annihilation of suitors is understandable, but his true colors of impending death is demonstrated with the strong use of imagery, throughout the epic poem. It is clear that the author wants to emphasize how Odysseus plots to get retaliation