Examples Of Ptsd In The Odyssey

What is PTSD? PTSD is an abbreviation for post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition lasting from months to years that triggers flashbacks of a terrifying event that the infected have experienced accompanied with intense emotional and physical pain. In the Odyssey, the character Odysseus fought the Trojan War that lasted for 10 years. For 10 years, he fought face to face with his comrades against the Trojans far away from his wife and son. For 10 years, so many people have died that the rivers were now filled with blood and you can smell the scent of death. After the war ended, Odysseus begins another dangerous journey to his kingdom, Ithaca. This paper is about the impact stress and PTSD have on Odysseus’s decisions and comparing the stress

On his journey home, Odysseus have made multiple mistakes that he usually doesn’t make. One example is in the Odyssey when Odysseus shouted at Polyphemus while he was throwing the rocks, “Cyclops— if any man on the face of the earth should ask you who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus, raider of cities, he gouged out your eye, Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!”(Odyssey, 152). I believe the Odysseus in the past would have kept his pride in and be quiet, not because of Polyphemus’s father, but for his crew and him to escape safely without constantly getting thrown with giant boulders, capable of crushing ships in one blow, missing inches away from them. Why would you keep screaming at an opponent that can accurately throw life threatening boulders at you? Clearly, Odysseus was not in his right mind and was just letting everything out. This is just a theory based on what we already know about him, but there are choices Odysseus made in the story that could have easily been able to figure out but choose not to. The example is when Odysseus chose to sail past Scylla instead of Charybdis, he was thinking of doing what Circe said to do “But now I cleared my mind of Circe’s orders— cramping my style, urging me not to arm at all.” The first problem that proves Odysseus was not thinking correctly was choosing to sail past Scylla instead of Charybdis. By sailing past Scylla, Odysseus is guaranteed to lose six of his men, one for each of the 6 heads, instead of Charybdis, a monster that create whirlpools three times a day and can destroy the entire crew if they were to get trapped in the whirlpools. The first choice already have six casualties and requires luck to get past with only six deaths while the second choice can result everyone dead or alive, but requires a