In the tale of Odysseus and in other stories from world mythology, the theme of loss and humiliation was constant and unrelenting, variously presented as the dragon, the sea monster, Scylla and Charybdis, an imprisonment, plague or illness, a falling into hell, the sirens, a storm, darkness, a shipwreck, the lotus eaters, the state of fatherlessness or orphanhood, homelessness, being stranded on an island, blindness, and often the powerless state of poverty and penury.
