You are Odysseus. Write a 500-word persuasive letter to Zeus asking him for safe passage home. You, Odysseus, have had to endure unimaginable crises while attempting to sail home to Ithaca. Imagine that your last chance to arrive home is to argue your situation and plead with Zeus to be merciful and offer his assistance.

its only 453 words but it is pretty close

Explanation:

Zeus god of the sky and thunder,

I hope this letter is finding you well, unlike myself. Im sending this letter to you with hope you would find compassion towards me, and provide me with a safe journey home. You have seen my displeasure, the evil i have encountered and fought with, toiled through and survived past the attempts on my life, and the obstacles that have blocked my path. I have faced adversity after adversity, all to still end up short from the one thing i have desire most in life, to return home - to see my son, and my wife, even just a glance before i draw my last dying breath. I survived your hideous Sirens. I have stood strong through your raging Storms, and now I ask you to be merciful. Has all this torrment not been enough? Are your guests pleased? Now, if you're done toying, let me find my way, without your forsaken beasts following me at every turn. O Zues this can only end with you, for i am at my end. I can go no longer with just my own stregnth alone. If i could just have your mighty hand to lead my journey on. I have yet to see my wife and child in almost twenty years! My son may not even reconize his own fathers face, he will ignore the sound of my voice. You are my last hope. If you can not spare your powers to give my a safe passage home i ask of you this, just let them know that i tried. That i fought tooth and nail to get home to them, that i did not give up. They will be on my last dying breath. Just as they have been on my mind every hour we have been apart. That i loved them both with every fiber of my being.I know you are capable Zeus, the only one capable.

                                                                                                            -With all the grattitude in the world,

                                                                                                                                          Odysseus

the first proposition is to question economic materialism and victorian christianity. the lines are:

“it moves us not.—great god! i'd rather be

a pagan suckled in a creed outworn; ”

wordsworth is stating that nature no longer interests mankind, that the latter is not “moved” by it and explains that ancient western paganism had a more positive attitude concerning nature since it lacked the perv erted judaeo-christian interpretation of having received the world and all its animals and elements from god to use as we , instead of humans actually being not only part of nature but its wardens, meant to appreciate it and protect it.

the next lines are:

“so might i, standing on this pleasant lea,

have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

have sight of proteus coming from the sea;

or hear old triton blow his wreathed horn.”

wordsworth here make it very clear that by actually looking and contemplating nature, human beings would reconnect with happiness, serenity and purpose. the use of mythological figures is quite evocative as well, proteus is a greek mythological god of the changing sea. he personifies the sea that changes, which symbolizes the way nature changes and inevitably can change to be destructive not only due to natural causes but to human pollution. furthermore, the sea is even more symbolic since all life originated in the sea so it is not only our past but our future since no life form in our planet can survive without water and if all water is destroyed in earth all life will be gone as well.

he then uses triton which is symbolic of the synthesis of both nature and mankind. triton is a mythological greek god that has the upper body of a man and the lower body of a fish (a merman). this human fish duality evokes the fact that humans are not only human but also part of nature, the fish tail representing nature. the main attribute of this god was that he used a conch shell as a horn to calm the roaring seas. in other words, triton uses nature through science for the benefit of human sailors who risk death during tempests. with the use of such metaphor, wordworth is conveying the message that human technology   is supposed to use nature to preserve nature and thereby humanity as well.