Quotes

1) (Telemachos:) ‘My guest, since indeed you are asking me all these questions, there was a time this house was one that might be prosperous and above reproach, when a certain man was here in his country.’ (1.231-233)

Telemachos considers his bad luck the work of the gods. He feels that the gods who favored them so have vanished along with Odysseus. Being abandoned by the gods is, to the ancient Greeks, akin to being cursed.

2) By nights he would lie beside her, of necessity, in the hollow caerns, against his will, by one who was willing, but all the days he would sit upon the rocks, at the seaside, breaking his heart in tears and lamentation and sorrow as weeping tears he looked out over the barren water. (5.154-158)

Odysseus has everything he could possibly want with Kalypso: eternal youth, luxury, prosperity, and sex but still, he yearns for the trials of mortal life.

3) Telemachos: ‘For my mother, against her will, is beset by suitors, own sons to the men who are greatest hereabouts. These shrink from making the journey to the house of her father Ikarios, so that he might take bride gifts for his daughter and bestow her on the one he wished, who came as his favorite; rather, all their days, they come and loiter in our house and sacrifice our oxen and our sheep and our fat goats and make a holiday feast of it and drink the bright wine recklessly. Most of our substance is wasted.’ (2.50-58)

Telemachos basically accuses the suitors of dishonor. His anger at them is justified by the fact that they have violated basic Greek principles.

4) […] the sweet lifetime was draining out of him, as he wept for a way home, since the nymph was no longer pleasing to him. By nights he would lie beside her, of necessity, in the hollow caverns, against his will, by one who was willing, but all the days he would sit upon the rocks, at the seaside, breaking his heart in tears and lamentation and sorrow as weeping tears he looked out over the barren water. (5.152-158)

Odysseus’s desire for Kalypso has been trumped by his loyalty to Penelope.

5) [Antinoös] was to be the first to get a taste of the arrow from the hands of blameless Odysseus, to whom he now paid attention as he sat in Odysseus’ halls and encouraged all his companions. (21.98-100)

The poet shows us the gods’ intention for Antinoös – he will be the first to die at Odysseus’s hand for his insolence.