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Odysseus As A Leader In Homer's Epic Poem, The Odyssey

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In Homer’s Epic Poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus starts off his journey as a man with one simple goal, to win, but as the story goes on, he gets more complicated by acquiring sympathetic traits as he goes on his journey. These traits gained make Odysseus and overall, better leader.
Throughout Homer’s Epic Poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus expresses numerous heroic traits that cause him to be respected, both as a leader and as a person. Odysseus’ heroic qualities cause him to gain respect throughout the community as he was a great leader on and off the battlefield. Odysseus uses his intellect to trick and outsmart opponents during his 20-year journey. Odysseus, going through these tough battles, had to suffer losses. Odysseus was that kind of man that cared for his men and mourned them, but he knew that life must go on. That lead to a caring side of him that is expressed as he goes through the monster Scylla and whirlpool Charybdis (Homer, 821, page 1010). Along with a caring side, Odysseus leads his men by making quick decisions when they matter most. In the story, Homer describes Odysseus by using metaphors as intellectual. This is …show more content…

One quality that changed significantly throughout the course of his journey is his hubris. Hubris is the sense of excessive pride. At the beginning of the book, Odysseus is very arrogant, as he shows little respect to anyone else for the things they did to help him. But as the story goes on, he starts respecting. This change in his behavior results in Odysseus’ hubris decreasing over time. For example, Homer uses diction in “Sailing from Troy” when he uses words like “stormed,” “killed,” and “enslaved,” (Homer, 44-45) all of which, are associated with I with Odysseus narrating. In contrast, later in the book, Odysseus doesn’t kill without a justified reason, and uses more intellect when in battle compared to his early

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