In the Homeric world, the very roots of stories were tied to gender. The Muses, who inspired humans to create stories and songs, were women, daughters of Memory. Stories therefore have gendered identities from their inception, and in the Odyssey, the men and women who tell them adhere to the rigid gender roles ascribed by ancient Greek culture. Women's stories and songs are generally used to seduce and otherwise gain control over men by luring or deceiving them. Men tell stories to relate facts and to reinforce codes of behavior; often, male storytelling occurs as part of proper etiquette or ritual. Since the Odyssey itself is of the second type, each of the narrative examples is instructive. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Sirens sing to seduce; their song is the totality of their existence. They are, like the rest of the Greek pantheon, humans on a larger scale. In particular, the Sirens are extraordinary women and amplify the Odyssey's misogyny to its clearest embodiment. Their song is a symbol of the power of desire; strips men of their defenses and their self-control, distracting them from everyday life and worries. They sing of a unique knowledge they possess, which dates back to ancient and contemporary, especially as women have secret information that men must constantly try to divine from them. Is there pleasure in attaining this knowledge? “Can you feel joy listening to the song of the Sirens,” says Circe to Ulysses? but he will have to restrain himself physically against the irrationality that concupiscence will produce in him (XI.52). In general, storytelling combines pleasure and pain, and in this case, the supreme pleasure of the Sirens' song brings the supreme pain. Not only is seduction itself more powerful, but its consequences are deadly. Circe paints a bad picture of this for Odysseus, saying that the Sirens "sit in their meadow, but the beach before her is heaped with heaps of rotten men's bones, and the skins wither upon them" (XI.45- 46). The Sirens, symbol of female desirability, are untouchable. Perfection and its achievement are inversely related; Homer seems to say that the greater the desire and lust, the lesser the possibility of achieving it. If the Odyssey is a morality tale that attributes self-control and moderation to the perfect man, then the Sirens, through hyperbole, represent the dangers present in seductresses. The Sirens are not the only female characters whose singing represents their power of seduction. When Hermes comes to tell Calypso the will of Zeus, who has ordered her to free Odysseus, he stands and admires the scene before him. The garden is lovely; the inside of the cave is warm and fragrant; in short, everything is idealized, including Kalypso's activity. “He sang in a sweet voice as he went up and down the loom with a golden shuttle” (V.61-62). Since this passage falls among others that describe a sort of domestic paradise, Calypso is presented as the domestic icon par excellence, in the same way that the Sirens are the seductresses par excellence. His power in this area is so absolute, in fact, that Odysseus cannot escape this divine oikos until Zeus himself demands his release. There is also a slight extension of the seductive power of the Sirens in Calypso's "sweet voice". Calypso's singing, as well as her weaving, seem to symbolize her femininity; in the idealized home, these are the activities of the female head of the household. Circe also "sang in a sweet voice as she went up and down a large drawing on a frame" when heOdysseus' men reached her (X .221-222). It is this song that attracts them, for, as Polites says, "the whole place murmurs to its echo" (X.227-228). Outside Circe's house there are lions and wolves, which she tamed by drugging them, making them forget their ferocious nature. As soon as she has drawn the heroes to her with her song, Circe serves them a potion that makes them forget their homes. For animals the drug was enough, but for humans it had to work in conjunction with singing. Songs, then, are perhaps drugs that act on the intangible essence of humanity, on some element of consciousness, rather than on physical bodies and the basic needs that humans have in common with animals. Helen also drugs her listeners. His potion is "heartache, devoid of gall, to make one forget all sorrows" (IV.221). The narrative, which at its best transports its listeners to an alternative world, making them forget their own, at the same time encourages the memory of things past. The Muses are, after all, the daughters of Memory, so perhaps it is fitting that in the ritual of her storytelling, Helen causes her audience to forget some things and remember others. His is an almost masculine story, intended, like the stories of Nestor and Menelaus, to teach Telemachus more about his father. However, she tells this because she experienced it firsthand and was the only person to see through Odysseus' disguise. When Helen is finished, Menelaus interprets the story in an all-male format per Telemachus' instructions. Penelope also tells a story. It is initially told before the action of the Odyssey begins and is present in the text only through retellings. Penelope's story created by necessity; she tells it to postpone the choice between suitors, so as to give Ulysses more time to return home. Like Calypso, Penelope tells her story as she weaves. Homer thus establishes a parallel between the two women that highlights their disparity: one divine and one mortal, one who holds Odysseus prisoner and the other awaits his return. The action of weaving takes on another symbolic dimension if we consider the expression "weaving a story". Penelope is said to be skilled at weaving? "expert in beautiful works"? and, if this is believed to represent story-telling skill, it stands to reason that she was able to deceive suitors for three years (II.17). Penelope's story is also a lie, which is another predominantly male type of story. But she tells it precisely because there is no man to tell it for her; it is because Ulysses is gone that she is courted. While women tell stories to gain power over men, men tell stories to achieve some concrete goal, or as part of a formalized cultural practice. Demodokos is the most expert storyteller of Phaiacia, a place renowned for its storytelling. He represents the ideal narrator from a formal point of view. When he sings, Odysseus says it is as if "you had been there yourself or heard it from someone who was there" (VIII.491-492). Odysseus, in fact, tells him that he esteems him "above all mortals", elevating him to an almost divine level (VIII.487). Storytelling was one of the most prized skills in ancient Greece, and its formal practice was generally reserved for men. Demodokos also sings exclusively of gods and heroes, excluding mortal women. His stories reify Greek heroic ethics and patriarchy. Storytelling and singing play another, more specific role when the deeds sung are real rather than imaginary. Telemachus grew up without knowing his father; she has never had a male role model. When Athena sends him on a journey to find news of his father, the information he finds is more useful in filling this gap.