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Examples Of Inhumanity In The Odyssey

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In the past humanity has had a lack of knowledge of everyday occurrences which created fear, to fill this void they came up with heroes and gods to rival this spirit of evil and protect them. These fears often formed in the shape and presence of monsters and are prominent in Greek culture. On Odysseus's journey, he encounters monsters that collide with the values of ancient Greeks; these monsters include Charybdis and Circe. Homer displays the Binary Opposition between humanity vs. inhumanity in the Odyssey. As Charybdis challenges this opposition, three times a day the monster creates a humongous whirlpool without any warning and sucks any ship around into the death trap. Yet, he has no control over when this happens. The goddess of sorcery …show more content…

After they convince Odysseus to go home he asks Circe for guidance on how to get back to Ithaca and Odysseus describes Circe as believing that they should go “down to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone, there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of thebes”(Homer Book 10 623-624). Crice wants Odysseus to go to the Underworld to continue his journey and talk to the old spirits of people who can help him. Circe blurs the lines by helping Odysseus on his journey; at the beginning of Book 10, she enchants his men, yet she changes her mind and gives Odysseus instructions on how to get home. Odysseus comes into contact with the monster Charybdis twice; during these encounters, the monster shows clear signs of evil and destructiveness, yet it also displays a smidge of innocence. During the men's earliest exchange with Charybdis, they don't get sucked into the massive whirlpool that he creates and they sail around it. Yet Scylla does attack them as the men are too distracted by watching …show more content…

Greeks valued honor and not being able to fight back against this gigantic monster would make their cause of death unhonorable. Even though Charybdis is a terrifying monster, it doesn't have much control over itself. Three times a day, at random, the monster creates a massive whirlpool. Unlike Scylla who Odysseus says when “all eyes fixed on Charybdis/ now Scylla snatched six men from our hollow ship”(Homer Book 12 263-264). Scylla displays inhumanity by killing Odysseus’s men intentionally while Charybdis can't control when it is going to destroy a ship or kill innocent Greek soldiers, showing its humanity and innocence. Charybdis was a monster in Greek culture, yet his destructive acts of violence were not intentional. To conclude this, in society monsters represent questions that cannot be explained. So humans come up with these monsters to protect what these things they see truly could be. Especially in Greek culture, there was lots of missing information on how things occur. These monsters would eventually evolve into the opposite of Greek cultural

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