Odysseus’ Lack of Heroism
This essay will critique the character of Odysseus in Homer’s “Odyssey,” arguing against his traditional heroism by highlighting his flaws, moral ambiguity, and the consequences of his actions. At PapersOwl, you’ll also come across free essay samples that pertain to Odysseus.
In the epic poem, “The Odyssey”, Odysseus in not a hero because he cheated on his faithful wife, he also put his whole crew in danger because of his “pride”. For example he continues taunt The cyclop and putting his crew in danger. Pg 382, When he taunts Polyphemus Odysseus makes Poseidon gets mad and curses his Odysseus trip back home. Resulting in Odysseus’s actions he puts his crew in danger and ends up losing a lot of his men. But the Opposing side might say that was the only decision he had and was the best he could do.
Odysseus clearly knew that he was supposed to think about his crew before anything to keep them all safe and his crew ended up getting cursed because of Odysseus’s decisions . also when Odysseus cheated he had the choice of not doing that to his wife but still did it. Pg 387, when he travels to Circe’s land he decides to be unfaithful and cheat on his wife. Again when he did this he was only thinking of himself not his wife nor crew because his crew was turned into pigs while he enjoyed his time with Circe. Many argue that when he cheated he didn’t do it with love towards Circe Because he still loved his faithful wife.
Although some people think believe that was ok because he never lost feeling for his wife others understand that his wife turned down every single man that tried getting with her while Odysseus was gone. Then Odysseus shows to be careless when the arrive to the land of Helios because he let his men eat his cattle. On pg 398, he shows to be careless about the cattle he was strictly not to eat he still let his crew do it even when he knew the consequences. Odysseus knew the great danger he would put himself and his crew in and still did not care to stop them.
It might appear as if he might of actually tried to stop them but they didn’t listen because if how hungary they were. This view seems convincing at first, but he has gotten his crew to do many other thing but he couldn’t get them to not eat the cattle so that shows he really didn’t try to stop them. It is still apparent that he was careless about all the warnings he got about his trip and he still didn’t listen after losing so many crew members.
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