Odysseus Free Will In Homer's The Odyssey

Around the 1200 B.C., Odysseus was sailing the Mediterranean Sea for the purpose of reaching home. In his long narrative poem, The Odyssey, Homer conveys how Odysseus desperately wishes to go home to Ithaca. However, he faces brutal treatment and obstacles from several different antagonists, and more obstacles appear when he reaches home. Odysseus came across many external conflicts, which he dealt with intelligence, determination, and loyalty.

Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and the main character in homer’s The Odyssey, was gone for twenty years before finally returning to his family and his homeland. He struggled through many hardships and lost many loyal companions. The King of Ithaca would not have made it home without the assistance of the Greek gods. Despite all of the help and advice that Odysseus receives from the gods, he is a very brave man because his courage and daring in the cave of the Cyclops, his inability to give up and abandon his men on Circe’s island, and his flawless following of the gods instructions are acts of bravery that is uncommon in most men.

During Odysseus’s journey in The Odyssey, his own guile, the gods’ obstacles and their assistance for him affected his destiny. Odysseus uses his crafty sense of trickery and guile to get out of situations, which allow him to reach his destiny of returning home. Many times in The Odyssey the gods who dislike Odysseus set obstacles to try to stop him from returning home. However, there are gods who favor him and give him assistance to reach his homeland of Ithaca.

A key event that delays Odysseus immensely on his journey home is Poseidon’s revenge. While sailing home, Odysseus and his men come to encounter Polyphemus, Poseidon’s Cyclops son. Odysseus and his men try to steal food from Polyphemus while he is away tending to his flock (Homer 362). When Polyphemus returns to his cave, he finds Odysseus and his men, and traps them in his cave. While trapped in the cave, Polyphemus eats many of Odysseus’

Odysseus thinks that his reasoning are final and his activities are constantly just and right, although he frequently allows his ego control his rational thinking, resulting harm to his group and messing with the gods’s plans. His men could have went back home Securely for it is the desire of Athena and the other heavenly gods who surround to her in Mount Olympus, however Odysseus takes it to himself to outrage and blind Polyphemus, the monstrous son of Poseidon, adored by his dad yet abhorred by the people, In this way distrusting their whole arrangement . Subsequent to being blinded by the heroine, Polyphemus tosses huge pieces of rocks at Odysseus's ship, nearly obliterating them at the same time. But instead of retreating for safety, Odysseus keeps on provoking Polyphemus and “[calls] out to the cyclopes again, with [his] men hanging all over [him] begging him not to”(Book 9, 491-492). His feeling of pride and presumption influences to disregard the requests of his people even in these critical circumstances . He will fulfill his own feeling of interest and pleasure without thinking of the result it would have on his crew. Despite the fact that he is bound to get away from all passings and assaults, his group isn’t so blessed. Their lives are in mortal peril since Odysseus considers them as child sheeps who should forfeit their lives for him when the circumstances comes, much the same as how mortals make conciliatory offerings of sheeps for the heavenly gods. He is willing to fulfill his own feeling of interest without thinking of his groups lives or their suppositions and is regularly infuriated when they negate his request. If they hurt his sense of pride and self-importance and pomposity , Odysseus will be overcome with outrage and

When the Cyclops returns, he kills some of the men. Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his name is Nobody and plans his escape from the barricaded cave with his crew. They trick the Cyclops into drinking lots of wine, he falls asleep, and the crew stabs Polyphemus in the eye. As they escape onto the ship and begin to sail away, Odysseus yells to Polyphemus: “Cyclops, if any mortal human being asks about the injury that blinded you, tell them Odysseus destroyed your eye, a sacker of cities, Laertes’ son, a man from Ithaca.”(9.662) The Cyclops in response prays to his father, “Poseidon, Enfolder of the Earth, dark-haired god, if I truly am your son and if you claim to be my father, grant that Odysseus, sacker of cities, a man from Ithaca, Laertes’ son, never gets back home.”(9.696) Odysseus tells Polyphemus his true name just to get credit for overpowering the Cyclops. In result, Polyphemus prays to his father Poseidon and this makes his father avenge his son and make Odysseus’ trip home as difficult and as painful as he can. After visiting Aeolus in Aeolia, Odysseus returns to the ship with a bag of winds and refuses to tell his crew what is

Who we are depends on how we react to major events in our lives. Our character traits build off of these experiences, too. In The Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus shows many traits while he travels on this adventure. Some of these include cleverness, leadership, and self-restraint.

Thanks to some quick thinking from Odysseus, he manages to blind the cyclops so he and his remaining crew can escape. After getting away from the cyclops, he turns back to the cyclops and tells him who he is. He said that his name was Odysseus and that he lives in Ithaca. After hearing this, the cyclops prays to Poseidon, the father of all cyclops, to get revenge on Odysseus for blinding him. Though there are no immediate effects, this causes trouble for Odysseus later on. He gained

Ten years after the fall of Troy, Odysseus a great hero has yet to return to his home in Ithaca. It begins with Athena and Poseidon who helped the Greeks during the Trojan War. Athena turned against the Greeks and convinces Poseidon to do the same. The Greeks are hit by storms on the way home and many ships are destroyed and the fleet is scattered. The war and his distress at sea keep Odysseus away from Ithaca for twenty years.

Odysseus’s journey home started when he was getting ready to set sail and leave Troy after the Trojan War. Odysseus shouts how he solved the war all by himself without any help from the gods. He is arrogant about their victory which angers Poseidon. Poseidon, along with other gods, curses his journey home.

Throughout the Odyssey, Odysseus can be seen making quite risky decisions that put his men in danger. Nonetheless, Odysseus still has redeeming qualities because he tries to bring all of his men home. In Homer’s, The Odyssey, Odysseus' bad qualities, or his arrogance, pride and being self-centered hurt his men throughout the epic poem.

Once they have successfully blinded the Cyclops, they ride out on the goats bellies to safety. It is here that Odysseus truly angers the Cyclops, by taunting him from safety on the deck of his ship; this causes the Cyclops to fire rocks at the ship, missing every time. When the Cyclops reaches his breaking point, he raises his arms up to the sky and prays to his father “Hear me Poseidon … if I really am your son and you claim to be my father grant that Odysseus, raider of cities, Laertes son who makes his home in Ithaca, never reaches home.” (Homer 228). Charles Segal states, “The spoken word of the prayer, the invisible and distant fulfillment, proves, after all, the more effective instrument of revenge.”(504). This highlights the fact that, with the wrath of the Poseidon placed upon him, Odysseus will have much more to overcome than just plain brute force of the Cyclops himself. Stavros Frangoulidis infers that it is this prayer that, “Marks the beginning of Odysseus’s troublesome journey back home and, therefore, his odyssey.” (45).

Odysseus is not only loyal to Penelope. He uses this opportunity to show Alkinoos of his loyalty towards his crew. Odysseus explains that after he leaves Troy, he eventually docks on an unknown island and sends out half of his men to search the island. His men find themselves in a cottage in the woods and enter when they hear a woman inside, only to be turned into pigs and thrown in a pig sty. When Odysseus hears the news, he sets off to rescue his crew, and when he finds the woman responsible, she offers him a feast.

The Odyssey is an epic poem that showcases the heroic actions contrasted with the grave disasters of Odysseus, a tragic hero on his way home from the war in Troy. The author, Homer, shows through Odysseus’ actions that even a hero such as he, has flaws. Flaws that if not acknowledged and learnt from, can spell grave disaster in the journey yet to come. Many Greeks recognize Odysseus as the most renowned hero of the Trojan war, thanks to his own accounts of his years away from Ithaca. Following the Greek beliefs, many believe that Odysseus couldn’t have kept himself away for so long, for only the gods can do something like this, and Odysseus can’t be the cause of the crew’s deaths, only the gods could be so cruel. While

Ten years after the fall of Troy, the victorious Greek hero Odysseus has still not returned to his native land Ithaca. A band of rowdy suitors, believing Odysseus to be dead, has overrun his palace, courting his faithful—though weakening—wife Penelope, and going through his stock for food. With permission from Zeus, the goddess Athena, Odysseus' greatest immortal ally, appears in disguise and urges Odysseus' son Telemachus to seek news of his father at Pylos and Sparta. However, the suitors, led by Antinous, plan to ambush him upon return.