Sean Flanagan
September 23, 2013
DZ
Option 1 Pre Mid Term essay After reading The Odyssey, a short poem Ulysses and then depicting the New York Times article, Reclaiming Travel, you can concur that though the stories may compare and contrast with each other. There is strong talk of travel and journey are relevant in all of them. With all sorts of reasons for travel, and each piece depicts it in their own way. Some through modern day out looks and others that relate back to the great times of Odysseus. Reclaiming Travel, a piece that was written and published in The New York Times gives strong reasoning and insight on modern travel. It cites The Odyssey and compares it to now a days look at traveling. Instead of journeys of mythical significance, we have turned it into business and the business of being on the move. It is no longer the oracle or the pilgrimage or for the spirits of the Gods. It is the compulsion that we have now, where we cannot stay in one place for years on years. We like to break up our time in the same place with something new and different, something with different archetypes, and something as a pleasure or of business duty. Travel used to be looked at as a major journey. It was a mission, where you would be gone for years at a time. Now with new travel options we look at it as a small occupant now, not a big deal. “The planets size hasn’t changed, of course, but our outsize egos have shrunk it dramatically.”(Reclaiming Travel, Stavans, Ellison) We have the insight and information to learn about travel and different lands through a computer screen. Us as modern people compared to the characters in The Odyssey, and Ulysses; “these characters don’t see travel as we moderns do.” (Reclaiming Times, Stavans, Ellison) They took travel as something mythical, something out of ordinance. That was the most depicting facts and information available in this piece. The main character Ulysses or in other words Odysseus declares that there is little point in staying home “by this still hearth” (Ulysses, Tennyson) with his old wife. Through translations, he can’t resist travels, he feels the need to live life to the fullest. The idea of travel or a journey in the eyes of Ulysses is to be great through his travels. He is a veteran of the sea and considers himself a symbol to all. Also from this poem, the idea of travel brought upon difficulties and problems. In this case, The Trojan War. You are exposed to many different people and ways of life. Ulysses made a very bold statement in the middle of the poem, “I am a part of all that I have met.”(Ulysses, Tennyson) Through my translating I feel that he is saying, that the travels he has been through, and the people and experiences that he has encountered has shaped him as a person. This is defiantly the concluding thoughts of this poem. Travel shapes you as a character, and makes you the person that you want to become. If you want to travel, you have to expand your horizons and sale to new seas. It’s about the explorations and journeys of new experiences, that’s the strongest theme I picked up here. Both the New York Times article, and the poem written by Tennyson link very well with how The Odyssey portrays travel and the idea of change within a person. This story focuses on O’s return home from his epic journey. His travels there and then his struggled travels back. So much changed and happened throughout the lives of these characters. There is no way possible to say that journey and travel cannot change a man or a group of people. He left his homeland, which entitled his nearest and dearest, but also took along some that were too close with him. Which is what you usually do with travel. Whenever you go somewhere you take your family of your close friends. Related to our modern day thinking, O brought along a very