Examples Of Odysseus Being An Epic Hero

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Imagine what it would feel like to be away from your home for 20 years and to not be able to find your way back. In this epic The Odyssey, the main character Odysseus and his 720 men are in the same situation and face many conflicts that make their journey back home a lot harder. Odysseus proves himself as an epic hero, which is someone who is almost perfect but has a few flaws to keep them from this, by continuing throughout the story to fight and lead his men back home. Odysseus is an epic hero because he’s brave, he’s smart, but he is also very conceited. My first reason why Odysseus is an epic hero is he’s brave. Odysseus proves he is brave when he and his men had to face Scylla and Charybdis, knowing he would lose up to 6 men or more he took control and led the men in a calm way even through he …show more content…

Some will say that Odysseus is not smart and is actually very ignorant because many times throughout the epic, Odysseus makes very dumb decisions, like when Odysseus and his men have to go past the Sirens, he decides to not plug his ears with beeswax like the rest of his men did so they don’t get attached to their voices but instead, he only ties himself up to a pole but still listens to them because he is curious, this is stupid because it is a very risky chance of getting attached to the Sirens voices and ruining things for him and his men on their journey to get back home. However, that point it not important because in Book 9 Odysseus had a plan to escape out of the cave. He knew that Greek wine had to often be watered down, so he gave Polyphemus drink after drink, until he was passed out drunk. He then used this as a part of his plan to escape the cave. This proves my point of Odysseus being smart because he knew that escaping the cave would have been difficult, since Polyphemus is very strong and wouldn’t have let him leave, he was smart to make him pass out so it was easier for him to escape the