"The Lotus Eaters"

The following sample essay on “The Lotus Eaters” is about a people who lived on an island in North Africa and were ruled by the lotus. Homer in the IX song of the Odyssey says that they ate the fruits of the lotus, which gave oblivion to those who tasted them.

Homer once stated in his book that: Those who ate the honeyed fruit of the plant lost any wish to come back and bring us news. All they now wanted was to stay where they were with the Lotus eaters, to browse on the Lotus, and to forget all thoughts of return (Homer, The Odyssey; Preface).

The Odysseus is a story about visitors. It is made of rich and powerful poems full of captivating and remarkable stories because telling their stories is what visitors do. These stories were told to help the readers understand the visitors better. Up to that point, the editor has underlined that he is an imaginative and commitment person.

This paper will delve on the foreigners treatment,

The story of Odysseus companys come across the Lotus-Eaters illustrate how susceptible his men are to be willing to leave him. After sent out by Odysseus, the representative confronts the Lotus-Eaters, who makes the men to eat of the lotus. It made them disinclined to deliver any message back, or to go away, they just wanted to stay on that island and eat the lotus. And dont have to think again of their way home. (9.95-97).

It can also be interpreted that the Lotus-Eaters were the same way, and were begging the men to become less anxious and take a break with them to savor the sweet lotus, especially since they did not have any thinking of destroying the men (9.

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92). The fact that they gave in doing it themselves show their proneness to abandon Odysseus, then certainly it shows a certain disregard that can be easily perceived into the uprising the men go through when they were sharing the sacred cow on Helios island. Looking previously in his narrative, his men also wanted to stay in the city of the Kikonians to banquet for a while, not having to deal with Odysseus daily warnings about revenge. These facts taken in addition help underline how susceptible his men are to abandon him.

In the second part, after the company settled, Odysseus ordered three of his men to seek for inhabitants on the land, because he had command over the men. When his men became obsessive to the lotus, however, instead of abandoning them, he hunted them out, finds them and drags them by force back in the ship. Furthermore, to prevent others from finding the lotus-eaters, he gets together the rest of his men and into the ship and departs. He went further by ligaturing some of his men in the rowing benches. He is more than determined to return home, regardless the challenges and obstacles. He was unwilling to get home at any cost because he wanted to go back to Ithaka with his men company.

Pointing out that Odysseus was found constitute his identity and personality., establishing his nature to the Phaiakians is important but since it is of great bizarre with the process of his founding. He also demonstrates he had in charge many men, but also that these men had it in their identities too willing to abandon him, describing in one line what he had before, and how he ended up losing everything. It also helps implore some pity on him since the audience noticed that it was not by his own delinquency but his suffering due to his eventual loss. So, it is obvious that his men left him because of their proneness but not by Odysseus lack of effort.

Thirdly, Catholicism, Protestantism and anti-Semitism were not understood and welcome in the era 1900s. Leopold Bloom, the imaginary main character and hero of Ulysses was no exception as he was the only Jewish. Bloom, one of the amiable personalities, is dealing with some level of denigration (for instance the Aeolus chapter). In this Lotus Eaters section, Blooms foreigner position is remarkable as he sat with the crowd, spotting the procedure but not taking part of it. What? Corpus. Body. Corpse. Great idea the Latin shouts them first. Hospice for the dying. They do not seem to masticate it, only swallow it down (80).

The crowd further makes him a foreigner as he maintains an upright position and pays attention when everyone else does so as not to be noticeable, though he knows he is different from the churchgoers. This event is like Stephens own perception of a foreigner. Stephen, as Bloom, are aware that they are not part of a standard Irish community and they censures the church (I am the servant of two masters…The imperial British state, Stephen replied, his hue rising, and the holy Roman Catholic (20)).

In contrast to Bloom, Stephen believes to some dimensions that he is superior than everyone else. Bloom is also to a level of a foreigner in his own house, a suggestion of which the editor gets a clue in Calypso when Bloom happens to forget his key. He is persuaded that his spouse is cheating on him with Blazes Boylan, and, in the Lotus Eaters, he aims to have his own flirtation with a lady named Martha, but he does not do very well with it. Even Martha could tell that not everything was fine in Blooms household and she even asked him a question about it Are you not happy in your home poor little naughty boy? (77).

However, it is obvious that Bloom is still in love with his wife and Molly and is willing to do his best for their marriage to work. An illustration of that part will be when he bought her a special lemon soap at the end of the section just to prove her how in love he is. Blooms status as a foreigner is also noticed when he is surrounded by his friends. At the end of the section, he routed to Bantam Lyons, who showed him interests in seeing the newspapers of the day. An example from the book is Hello Bloom, what is the best news? Is that todays? Show us a minute (85). His status as a foreigner among his friends is also seen in in Ulysses, in the Aeolus section. Both Bloom and Stephen need compatible items.

Bloom is not only a foreigner, but he has also lost his son not so long ago. Stephen has nobody to interact with, and unfortunately his father is not the one he will look up. They both self-examination as foreigner to regular Dublin life (different attitudes). Just as Stephen tries to socialize with others through his intellect like in debating Shakespeare and Hamlet in the Scylla and Charybdis section, so does Bloom use his character to interact with others. However, they are both rejected and left by themselves.