Odysseus As A Hero In Homer's The Odyssey

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Homer’s The Odyssey is a thrilling adventure about a brave soldier trying to get home. Faithful Odysseus uses his intelligence and wit to face monsters, gods and goddesses, and troubled land and waters throughout his journey to get home to Ithaca. Odysseus realizes strength alone will not save him and his crew. Strategy conveys a hero by giving him more strength and intelligence than just strength alone. One of Odysseus’ first journeys is the Land of the Cyclopes where he and his men scavenge for food and shelter. They are faced by Polyphemus, a rude and terrifying cyclopse, and are immediately in danger. Polyphemus holds them captive in his cave home and Odysseus uses his strategy skills to escape by having his men brutally stab Polyphemus in…show more content…
He discovers that his home is swarmed with suitors trying to marry Penelope and he organizes a plan to rid his home of the suitors. Before the challenge Penelope has planned for the suitors, Odysseus removes all of the suitors’ weapons from the Great Hall. After being the only man to complete the challenge, he, his son, and his two faithful servants murder every last one of the suitors. He reveals himself to Penelope soon after. At first she does not believe Odysseus or her son, so she tells the Eurycleia, the maid, to “place the bed outside the bedchamber my lord built with his own hands” (p. 782). One of the posts on the bed is from an olive tree still in the ground, and Odysseus and Penelope did not want to remove the tree so they built their bedroom around it. Odysseus, Penelope, and Eurycleia are the only people who have been inside the bedroom, so Odysseus would know that it would not be able to be moved. Telling Eurycleia to move the bed proves that the once home beggar is, in fact, Odysseus who has returned
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