Calypso's Use Of Irony In The Odyssey

There is hardly an impetus the likes of which can match the human lust for revenge. There hardly exists a motivator which can so spur a man to action than the need to balance a scale. Indeed, such a concept is a ubiquity in the nature that defines mankind, with many phrases arising from the primal urge: to right a wrong, an eye for an eye, blood for blood, skin for skin, tooth for tooth – the list is endless. And it is no mere coincidence that such an array of commonly expressed sayings refers in one way or another to violence; the two are quite inextricably linked, for a desire for comeuppance most commonly arises from a strongly acerbic concoction of emotions and primal reactionary instincts. There is a profound gratification inherent

However, the consumer is not the only one devoured by such an innate need; Poseidon, god of the sea, longs to see him destroyed for his great deeds against the Trojans for Greece. And thus, justice gains a complex duality – it serves as an obstacle as well as a motivation. In this manner, Homer gives vindication more than one purpose and employs it expertly as a development tool, chiseling away at Odysseus’ character. The urge to satisfy a vengeful spirit bolsters the consumer’s desire to see the lost sailor home, and in the same breath it stops him dead in his tracks. “But now Poseidon… spied Odysseus sailing down the sea and it made his fury boil even more… with that he rammed the clouds together, churned the waves into chaos, whipping gales from every quarter, shrouding over in thunderheads the earth and sea at once – and night swept down from the sky -- and Odysseus’ knees quaked. (5.321-327)” In the throes of such a powerful reckoning, our hero quivers. And rightly so. As the inclination to balance a scale can drive a man to murder, so too can it incite the scathing rage of a god and birth bedlam. So it is that we see revenge given two roles not five books into Homer’s grand poem, and surely its

Having sailed for days upon the open ocean, striving for home, Odysseus is fated to make shore on the giant’s land, and encounter the beast under the most dreadful of circumstances. “Here was a giant’s lair, in fact, who always pastured his sheepflocks far afield… here was a piece of work, by god, a monster built like no mortal who ever supped on bread, no, like a shaggy peak – a man-mountain rearing head and shoulders over the world. (9.208-214)” Upon meeting the prodigious creation of a terrible divine moment, Odysseus laid his craft and wit, only to be met with a response designed with the most nefarious impetuosity a Cyclops could muster. “Lurching up, he lunged out with hands toward my men and snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground, he knocked them dead like pups – their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor – and ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal, he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all! (9.323-330)” Odysseus, sure as the sails he followed to Troy, could respond to such a despicable and formidable welcome in no other way than to formulate a truly Homeric strategy, that was, in its very essence, an eye for an eye. “I (Odysseus) poured him another