Question

Critique the whole story of Odyssey.

Answer 1

What I admire about Odysseus’ behaviour as a hero is his confidence. Rather than being self-doubting of his abilities he is proud of them. We see this in Book 9 when he deals with the Cyclops Polyphemus. Firstly, he tells the Cyclops his name is ‘Nobody’. This idea helps him to escape at the end when Polyphemus screams “O my friends, it’s Nobody’s treachery, not violence that is doing me to death”, and the other Cyclopes believe that nobody is hurting him.

He escapes the cave using a sharpened, burning stick to blind the son of Poseidon, and then laughs to himself about how the ‘cunning notion of a false name’ fooled the Cyclops.