Odysseus’
bow represents who and what he was when he left to fight in the Trojan War and
the qualities that made him a good man and a good leader to his men: powerful
and immensely strong, and the fact that only he has the actual strength to
string it shows that he was the strongest around. He was strong not only
physically, but intellectually. None of the suitors can so much as bend his
bow, and Eurymachus even says “What does grieve me is the thought that our
failure with this bow proves us such weaklings compared with the godlike
Odysseus. The disgrace will stick to our names forever”. None of them can bend
the bow because they’re not good men like Odysseus, and even he had to go
through a twenty year long journey to get back to a point where he could use
his brain and move away from all the violence he experienced and perpetuated
during the war. All the suitors stay in his palace wasting his food and wine,
doing what they want and showing no regard for anything other than their own
wants. They don’t know how to use their brains like Odysseus does, they don’t
have the same virtues as him (or any other person). They’ve been shown as
opposite to all the other places that Telemachus has visited on his search for his
father, as well as the Phaecians, who are all upstanding citizens who treat
their guests how they’re supposed to be treated and make sacrifices to the
gods. The suitors do none of that.
Odysseus’ bow and the suitors
inability to string it at all underlines the fact that they weren’t these good,
virtuous men who did right by others; they did what they wanted, and not even
in their own homes. Odysseus can string his bow and use it because he has
finally returned to the state of mind he was in before. He’s returned home a
good man and regained whatever strength and skills he had lost in the war.
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