In most cultures, death signifies the utter separation of the psyche and soma; it is entirely sacred and irreversible. Most societies see defiance of death's essential element ï its finality ï as supernatural phenomena. However, the concept of rebirth is essential to most literature symbolizing the growth and change of a character. Gabriel Garcia Marquez states that, "humans are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, ... life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves," illustrating the very nature of figurative rebirth. In Homer's The Odyssey, the gods, circumstances, and even himself, reinvent the homesick Odysseus through emotional, spiritual, and mental renaissance along his tumultuous journey home.
It must be assumed that to regain life, life must be lost in one way or another; rebirth is meaningless if the need to acquire newness and life is nonexistent. The reader first finds Odysseus confined to the island of Ogygia, dead to both his captor and the rest of his world.
ODYSSEUS karnavires 66
ODYSSEUS karnavires 68
ODYSSEUS karnavires 60Kalypso, has concealed him in her immortal clutches, shrouding his existence from the human world. Odysseus haunts the shore in the daylight scanning the "bare horizon of the sea." Ironically, Kalypso's island, full of luxuries beyond a mere mortal's imagination, brimming with exotic life to tempt the eye, comforting to any wandering man, is the very core of Odysseus's emotional death. Lifeless on a fantasy isle, Odysseus must be reborn to reunite with a human reality. To defy fate's final decree was a near impossibility in Greek Mythology. To attempt escape from the ultimate shears of the third sister required specific and arduous guidelines, such as those levied on the poet Orpheus, by the gods. Bowing to the all-powerful Fates, even Zeus shied from reversing their decisions. Given the...