Examples Of Dishonesty In The Odyssey

Can dishonesty be valuable if it was used to achieve desirable outcomes? Is lying considered justified if it was involved in a dangerous situation? It is not always bad to lie. As children, we were continuously taught to be honest. We have grown to be implanted with the fact that lying is unacceptable but admissible. In Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, some might argue that Odysseus’s dishonesty and deceit cause loss of trust and negative consequences. However, Odysseus’s dishonesty and deceit do not always have bad intentions, it can be seen when Odysseus and his men escaped out of Polyphemus’s cave to get out of trouble and when Odysseus received help from his men to get closer to their objective. While lying is looked down upon, people

Before leaving The Land of the Dead, Teiresias told Odysseus that they will face destruction and only he will survive to return home. After the prophecy, Odysseus and his men encountered Charybdis and Scylla. To avoid destruction, Odysseus demanded his men to sail the ship quickly through Scylla and hug onto the cliff. Odysseus did not want his men to lose hope and turn against him if they knew that only Odysseus would return home. To avoid his men going against him, “Odysseus does not tell his men of Circe’s last prophecy-that he will be the only survivor of their long journey,” (Homer 716-719). Odysseus’s dishonesty admitted that lying can get you to progress to where you want to be. To get his men motivated, Odysseus did not tell his crew that only he will survive the journey. Instead, Odysseus lied by getting their hopes up of returning home, when in the end he knows that they will not make it back. In order to achieve his objective, he did this to avoid losing everything but to obtain the significant help of his men. So rather than sailing toward Charybdis to lose all his men and the ship, he chose to sail toward Scylla to have a greater chance of coming