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  • Essay / Themes of Borders, Travel, and Migration in Ancient Literature

    As a species, humans have specialized not only in exaggerating the vestiges of our survival instincts, but also in incorporating intangible concepts in our daily lives. From calculus to gravitational time, people regularly implement new discoveries in hopes of improving human timelines. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Despite such drastic changes in our lifestyles, one subtle, yet fundamental, aspect remains a stable theme within growing societies: borders. Designed to separate from the start, boundaries simply undergo changes based on temporal context. They were present even before the appearance of humanity: members of the animal kingdom show hostility when their territories, or their borders, risk being compromised, and physical barriers such as mountains and seas existed before the first organisms on earth. As Professor Keller stated. , and subsequent conferences have demonstrated, boundaries cannot be defined by a single definition simply because there are several. The word encompasses physical, metaphysical, cultural, social, spiritual, and a myriad of other types of barriers. Their objective, which seems deceptively clear, is contradictory: if borders divide, they also stimulate the fusion of peoples. However, when applied with their emotional and spiritual definitions, boundaries serve to differentiate and protect an individual's well-being. As such, due to its widespread influence across multiple aspects of society, breaking, crossing and re-establishing borders is expected to have a profound effect on those who participate in travel and migration. Most individuals will find an environment of change distressing, and this phenomenon is a plausible response to such stimuli. A cursory glance at Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey reveals a powerful example of forced displacement: Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, is stranded on the island of the goddess Calypso, who intends to making him her husband, for seven years, and the experience has clearly taken its toll on him. Athena, a goddess who favors Odysseus, reveals that he is a "poor unhappy man" who "longs to see even the rising smoke / of his own homeland, and he wants to die." In the case of Odysseus, the fact that he lived out his days on the island of Calypso, "sobbing with sorrow and pain", looking "at the barren sea", was the consequence of the loss of his homeland and, subsequently, of a large part of his identity as a husband, as a husband. father, king and hero. On the island of the goddess, Odysseus is simply a mortal man, and by accepting Calypso's offer, he will be unable to reclaim his title that he worked hard for in Troy. Thus, Odysseus openly refuses to compromise his identity. An insight into Odysseus' behavior is provided by Charles Stangor, who states that self-esteem is established by perceiving oneself as important, or in other words, Odysseus is unable to sacrifice the prospects of glory that would follow his return in Ithaca. While this could easily be seen as Odysseus simply hoping to redeem himself and restore his ego as a male protagonist, closer inspection reveals that The Odyssey presents Odysseus as a character whose struggles demonstrate the emotional effects of physical barriers and the delocalization on the psyche of an individual. and self-esteem. By being displaced for so long, Ulysses suffers: the isolation has disturbed his feelings.