Is Odysseus Really a Hero?
Is Odysseus really a hero? This question has come up in my mind several times in class discussions recently. To me, he seems more like a guy who's just along for the ride in a journey that the gods are providing him. Some gods hate him, some gods love him, and he is like a pawn in their game of power. The examples are plentiful. He is always being told what to do or being forced to do something against his will, and once he finally overcomes one set of obstacles another comes up. For example, Circe tells him to sail past the sirens and then Scylla and Charybdis. Zeus then forces him to stay for a month on the island of the Sun, Thrinacia, and that causes his men to starve and eat the Sun god's cattle which in turn makes Zeus punish the crew even more. Like I said, Odysseus seems more like a guy who goes with the flow of the gods, not really a character with much say in the matter.
The reason I started thinking about whether we could classify Odysseus as a hero or not stemmed from my observations of his lack of power, and also what I noticed about when he did have some agency in certain scenarios. More often than not, Odysseus adopts totally unheroic qualities when he is given the option to. To be clear, when he needs something from someone, such as help from the Phaeacians, he is very kind and tactful. However, in other situations he is the exact opposite.
The first thing that comes to mind when I say that is the part of the story when Odysseus is at the land of the Cyclopes. He first abuses xenia by entering Polyphemus's cave without permission and eating some of his food. He is also taunting when he calls back to Polyphemus as they are sailing away and reveals that his name is Odysseus. If he had not done that they would have escaped peacefully, but once Polyphemus knew that it was Odysseus, he prayed to Poseidon to hurt Odysseus, and the god did just that (another example of how the gods are the true guiding factors in Odysseus's quest). Several other examples of when Odysseus was unheroic come into my head as well. He was greedy when he plundered Ismarus and when he wanted to listen to the call of the sirens. Additionally, he is very often self-centered. When recounting his journey to the land of the undead, he continuously brags about how he was talking to famous people and flexes his importance (and also asks the bard to sing the story of Odysseus, which is both self-centered because he wants all the Phaeacians to hear about his exploits and also because there is no way he could have been certain that everyone knew his tale, he just assumed they did). Finally, Odysseus shows again how self-centered he is when his crew are approaching the six-headed monster Scylla. Instead of warning his men to the upcoming danger, he puts on his own suit of armor, and protects himself from the attack.
Thus, while Odysseus is at the center of this tale, and in prime position to be a hero, he often falls short of grandeur when the gods are not by his side. When we see him alone, with an actual choice to make, he most often adopts an unheroic personaliy and approach. From abusing xenia to having a greedy, taunting, and self-centered attitude, I don't see much of a hero in Odysseus.
I don't think he's as self-centered as you say. Sure, he embellishes his stories, but all our adventures and experiences seem better from our point of view. When he's talking to the spirits, he just mentions that other famous people showed up, not giving them much more than that, and when he's approaching Scylla, he wasn't being self-centered not telling his men. He did that so that they would be able to safely get past the monster without cowering and stopping next to it. Telling them would not have changed anything.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...you make very good points! I especially agree with you in that Odysseus seems to have little to no agency in his own heroic journey, as the gods basically do everything for him - set him on adventures, send him to kingdoms, etc. He can't even sleep without Athena's help!
ReplyDeleteI wonder, though, how much this is simply us paying more attention to what we're reading (versus the stereotypical hero narrative) - aren't all heroes made a little bit by circumstance (and in the case of Greeks, gods)? And in this specific epic, can we see the gods' interferences as results of Odysseus himself? Aren't everything the gods do to him influenced BY him, at least a little bit?
I do see your point in saying that Odysseus is not a perfect hero, but I do think the picture looks a little bit different when put in the context of Homer and Ancient Greek customs (instead of the 21st century American hero we're used to).
Nice post! Odysseus definitely made a lot of poor choices in his interactions with Polyphemus and he didn't seem to feel guilty when he was telling his story. He also does seem somewhat self-centered, especially when he discusses his crew and blames them completely for their own deaths. I'm not sure if Odysseus's lack of agency makes him less of a hero though. Some major characteristics of the hero's journey show a lack of agency. An example is the call to adventure; heroes don't decide on their own to go on an adventure. And another characteristic is that heroes are guided by mentors. While the gods' involvement in Odysseus's life is certainly very overt, I'm not sure Odysseus has less agency than heroes guided by more mundane forces. Luke, for example, wouldn't have been able to destroy the death star if other people hadn't acquired the plans, assembled the squadrons, put him in a plane, told him where to go, and told him where and when to shoot.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on this, Odysseus' is given several opportunities to act heroically, but fails. He acts pretty selfishly and doesn't seem to care about his men's safety, which made me dislike him more as a hero.
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points, but you also bring up a question I've been thinking about a lot - how much of the gods "doing things for Odysseus" should we take literally?
ReplyDeleteFor example, we see times when the gods explicitly use power (Poseidon turning the ship to stone). We see times when Odysseus explicitly makes decisions on his own. But then we see things like "Athena let him sleep" or "Zeus sent a storm to strand the ship" - things that in a modern story, we wouldn't ascribe to an entity. Should that storm and sleep actually be seen as gods doing those things for Odysseus, or just stuff that happened that was ascribed to them?
It doesn't really matter here, but later, when they say things like, "Athena made Odysseus afraid" or "she made the suitors miss" did she actually? IDK the nuances of translating a thousands-year old text from a completely different religion and worldview evade me.
I agree with the points you make in this post. It really seems like the gods have a lot of influence over Odysseus and his story. There are multiple accounts where Athena changes Odysseus's appearance or alters events for his benefit. The example you mentioned of Circe is a very good one, as it shows that much of Odysseus's journey was guided by others.
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