The Great Wanderings: Scylla and Charybdis
In book twelve, after Odysseus is back from the Underworld, Circe provides him with specific instructions on how to make it back home safely. Within her instructions she presents two route options for him. In this journey, Odysseus must decide what passage is right for him and his crew to follow, though their is some consequences behind both routes. He has the choice to either sacrifice six of his men or risk losing his entire ship. With the option of taking either one route or the other, the ultimate goal for him and his crew is to get home alive.
The main obstacle that Odysseus faces are the two monsters, Scylla and Charybdis. With Charybdis, she takes form as a monstrous mouth. She swallows huge
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This might have seemed to be a selfish choice that Odysseus made, but Odysseus knew that if he told his crew more, that the boat would fall into chaos, and everyone would have died.
Within the epic adventure of Scylla and Charybdis, the style of passages is pretty evident when it came to Odysseus selecting the safest route for him and his crew. Scylla and Charybdis are both derived from Greek mythology idiom of “caught between a rock and a hard place.” With the set goal of wanting to get home alive, he has to face the obstacle of wanting to sacrifice two men or risking his entire ship sinking to the ocean floor. Either way, in life, there is never an easy way when it comes to making a difficult decision.
In The Odyssey, Scylla and Charybdis address the Greek tradition for teaching. Along with the excitement and other interests, the episode taught a valuable life lesson. The lesson was rather simple, as with most of the lessons in The Odyssey and it was presented at the very end of the story. To understand the lesson, however, you must first realize the twist Homer put onto the ending of the story;
"Then Scylla made her strike, whisking six of my best men from the ship " (Odyssey