Katie Greene Week 3

After reading The Odyssey I had a deeper understanding of the historical content of Grecian life and what the people of Greece actually were about, culturally and what was most important to them. What their values were. It became a pattern. The hero always triumphing over evil, and having Odysseus come out on top. Having that leader to look up to was important to the people of Greece, to have a, not always a fictional character, but to have someone they can be proud to have represent their home land.

The Odyssey tells a tale of a man that could easily be described as a god because of the way he speaks about himself, and where he comes from. The events that Odysseus had gone through were only to be achieved by one true hero. A leader of a crew that could not have gone on with out his strength, determination, knowledge, and courage. All of these virtues make up the identity of Odysseus and the man that he was. “I dragged it from the flames, my men clustering round as some god breathed enormous courage though us all” (Homer pg.223).

Homer then goes into detail about how Odysseus was the man behind that action, the stabbing of Polyphemus’s eye with the steak. No one out of the crew even bothered to come forward and volunteer to do the dirty work, they all assumed their captain would, and he did with out a doubt. He made the brave decision to harm the creature so their crew could escape, well what was left of them anyway. Being able to understand the fact that it was no ones responsibility to stab the Cyclopes, but Odysseus.Even after Polyphemus had awoken other Cyclops’s earlier in the poem Odysseus had told Polyphemus that his name was ‘Nobody.’ With his cunning, and clever ways, this had come to his advantage. No on came to Polyphemus’s aid, he Cyclops was left to die. “They lumbered off but laughter filled my heart to think how nobody’s name-my great cunning stroke-had duped them one and all” (Homer pg. 224).

Once Odysseus and what was left of his crew got out of the Cyclops’s cave, did he have the edacity to cried back “So, Cyclops, no weak coward it was whose crew you bent to devour there in your vaulted cave-you with your brut force!” (Homer pg. 226).By Odysseus doing this, it proves that he had no fear of what was left to come if anything. By dissecting what Homer meant by having Odysseus taunt the Cyclops even after defeating him with out any struggle.

In the end of this passage what the reader is left with is the identity of Odysseus. A strong willed hero that will always come out on top, and that is part of why the Odyssey was so important to Greece, they hero was someone who they could possible relate to and who they could look up to as a character.