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temptation in the odyssey

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The antagonist, Temptation

This essay is about temptation in the Odyssey, more specifically temptation and its role in the book. Showing how food displays everyday temptation and how Odysseus recklessness causes his own troubled journey home.

Temptation in laments terms is the desire to do something you know you shouldn’t do. This theme is something that is repeated constantly throughout the Odyssey in a multitude of ways and for many reasons. It shows on a scale how human and mortal the characters really are. At the two extremes of the scale there are those who are favored by the gods and are even sometimes called “god like” and there are those who are just mortals, no special treatment from up high. Yet all fall pray to temptation …show more content…

Knock, Knock whose there? Temptation! This could have been the last a final test against Odysseus and his crew before they sailed home, but they were tempted by the gods to slaughter the sacred animals and eat their lives away. This event put Odysseus back quite a ways. On the verge of almost being home the greatest antagonist of all; temptation, walks up on four legs and utterly wins again.
Although food is prominently the number one source for temptation but it is not the home run, the granddaddy of them all or the big kahuna of temptation. That spot is reserved for an act of recklessness that the “god like Odysseus” fell victim to. Kleos is a term used in epic poetry that speaks to the immortal fame or glory of a character. Characters earn it by doing deeds that could possible define who they are. Odysseus makes very little mistakes in the Odyssey. He is constantly praised for not only being strong and cunning physically but mentally as well.
Odysseus and his crew came across the land of the Cyclopes. Odysseus was aware of these “Lawless savages who leave everything up to the gods.”3 Odysseus and his crew see an island just off the shore untouched by man and thriving with animals and nature. That is where they beach their ships in the midst of night. When morning came the crew hunted down a hundred or so goats and feasted all day, while marveling at the Cyclopes across the water from them. Being the intellectual he is Odysseus decides that it would be a good idea

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