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Essay Odysseus: A True Hero

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There are many different ways that a hero can be described or imagined. Everyone has their own ideas of what makes someone a hero. Also, for many heroes it is debatable whether they really are a hero. In The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Odysseus is one such debatable hero. Odysseus is a hero because he is brave, level-headed, and he shows faithfulness and respect to important figures in his life. First, Odysseus shows bravery in many ways throughout The Odyssey. He shows bravery when he is with allies and friends, which is much easier to do than when one is by themselves. He shows this bravery when he goes to investigate the Kyklops’s cave, “I wished to see the caveman, what he had to offer,” (IX, 248-249). …show more content…

Also, he must kill all of them with only a little help. To do this he needed an enormous amount of bravery. Overall, Odysseus’s bravery makes him a hero. Second, Odysseus remains level-headed throughout his journey by continuing to be a strategist and maintaining wisdom. Odysseus shows his ability to strategize mainly on Ithaka. When he is with Athena on the shore, ““Whoever gets around you must be sharp and guileful as a snake: even a god might bow to you in ways of dissimulation. You! You chameleon! Bottomless bag of tricks! Here in your own country would you not give your stratagems a rest,”” (XIII, 371-376). Here Athena herself says that Odysseus could fool even a god with his tricks and strategies. To have a god of wisdom and say this to him shows how good of a strategist he is. Another example of his mastery of stratagems comes soon after when he plots with Athena, “under the old grey olive tree those two sat down to work the suitors death and woe,” (XIII,465-466). Athena and Odysseus devise a strategy together and unless Odysseus was an excellent strategist, Athena would not let him plan with her. His strategies allow him to save himself and as many other people as possible which makes him a hero. Odysseus also sows his level-headedness through his wisdom. One example is in the lair of the Kyklops, “if I killed him we perished there as well, for we could never move his ponderous

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