The Relationship Between Father and Son in The Odyssey

The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said "What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father." The father and son are always similar to each other in ways that are not always apparent. There are always certain values that define a father's relationship to his son and vice versa. This is why a father and son will go to any limits to do anything for each other. These values are also put in The Odyssey, by Homer, to help shape the relationship between the fathers and sons in the book. The values that characterize the relationship between father and son, as Homer portrays them, are that a son must be willing to do anything for his father, whether it is avenging him or keeping a secret for him. A father is supposed to do anything to avenge his son and to protect him from any type of harm. And through these beliefs, there is the creation of a very close and eternal relationship between a father and his son.

A son will always seek to avenge his father from any type of disrespect or humiliation. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, sought to do exactly that for his father and for that he is the constant example of a good son in The Odyssey. When Telemakhos goes to Pylos to see Nestor, the king tells him of Orestes and what he did to the man who murdered his father. Nestor says, "And even as far away as Ithaka/ you've heard of Agamemnon - how he came/ home, how Aigisthos waited to destroy him/ but paid a bitter price for it in the end. / That is a good thing, now, for a man to leave/ a son behind him, like the son who punished/ Aigisthos for the murder of his great father." (41) Nestor believes that the best example of a son is that one which would go to any limit to avenge his father, a son exactly like Orestes. According to The Odyssey, every man should have a good son that would "punish" any man for doing harm to "his great father." A son is supposed to uphold his father as the greatest man that could have possibly walked the earth. He is meant to see his father not only as just plainly his father, but his "great father." And because he thinks so highly of his father he should feel ashamed if he can not do anything to avenge his father. But a son should never have to protect his father.

The duty of protection belongs to the father. A father's duty is to protect his son from any type of harm that could possibly be put upon him. Odysseus would do anything to protect his son. He literally went to hell and back just so he could see his family again (185-206). He had been gone for twenty years but when he returned home he made sure that he got rid of all that worried his son. Telemakhos was being harmed by the suitors who infested his home and tried to play games with his mother. Odysseus could not allow this. He said to the suitors, "You yellow dogs, you thought I'd never make it/ home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder...You dared bid for my wife while I was still alive...Your last hour has come. You die in blood." (410) Odysseus made sure that he put these men who disgraced his son and home through their "last hour" and through the death that they deserved. So, he did what he believed was just. He calls them "yellow dogs" as if they do not even deserve to be called human. The color yellow can stand for cowardice and deceit. He calls them yellow dogs because they took advantage of those who could not do anything about it, Penelope and Telemakhos, but now that Odysseus, a man who is obviously of superior strength than them, has returned home they can not abuse his family any longer.

Even though it seems as though revenge is the only action that brings father and son together, there are some instances where father and son bonding takes place outside of the 'battlefield.' Odysseus has been gone from home for 20 years and was not able to see his only son, Telemakhos, grow to be the man that he is now. When Odysseus finally returned and revealed himself to his son, they share one of the most emotional moments in the book: "Salt tears/ rose from the wells of longing in both men,/ and cries burst from both as keen and fluttering/ as those of the great taloned hawk,/whose nestlings farmers take before they fly." (296) Both men have been hoping to meet each other for so long that their "wells of longing" burst and tears flooded the room. Telemakhos and Odysseus are sharing a moment that they have been hoping would happen for the longest time. "So helplessly they cried, pouring out tears,/ and might have gone on weeping so till sundown,/ had not..." (296) The two men were helpless in their sorrow and they might have gone on "so tillsundown" if Telemakhos did not want to speak. It is also not only sadness that brings a man and his son together. Happiness and celebration work just as well as sorrow in doing that deed. Nestor and Peisistratos, Nestor's son, bond while sacrificing to the gods. They are bonding during a festive moment: "But the men/ still held the heifer, shored her up/ from the wide earth where the living go their ways,/ until Peisistratos cut her throat across, and black blood ran, and life ebbed from her marrow...These offerings Nestor burnt on the split-wood fire/ and moistened with red wine. His sons took up/ five-tined forks in their hands, while their altar flame/ ate through the bones, and bits of tripe went round." (48) Nestor and Peisistratos both perform the sacrifice to the gods together. It is special that at that exact moment they were both in the eyes of the gods. This seems to be a more sublime form of bonding, in which father and son are bonding through their connection with the gods. There is also a different type of bonding going on at the same time. Nestor's other sons are enjoying the food that was sacrificed to the gods. They are all eating in festivity. Food is what brings people together and allows a more special type of connection between people. It helps people ease up and express themselves in a way that they might not have been able to do without the comfort that food provides. And through that connection they create an environment in which father and son can bond and connect their lives, for better or for worse.

The relationship between a father and his son seem to be the strongest type of bond that The Odyssey expresses. A father will go to any limits to protect his son and a son will go to any limits to avenge his father. It is because of this connection that they their bond is so strong. The bond between a father and son is that which is eternal. From Hades Agamemnon commemorates his son for what he did to avenge him and Orestes is tortured by the Furies for eternity for what he did to avenge his father. This shows that the bond between father and son goes past the physical world and into the spiritual and infinite world.