Odysseus is a epic hero who is a flawed character who has both strengths and weaknesses.
He is determined to get home to Ithaca after a long journey home from Troy after a 10 year battle. Odysseus has many positive and negative traits that he learns from throughout all three books. Odysseus is a clever, cautious and ruthless epic hero. Odysseus is a very clever character, and he uses this trait to his advantage. While he was captured by Polyphemus, a cyclops who happens the be the son of Poseidon. Odysseus and his small crew were imprisoned inside Polyphemus’ cave guarded by a rock only a cyclops could move. When the cyclops asks Odysseus what his name is, he tells him “Nobody”. “Nobody- that’s my name. Nobody- so my mother and father call me, all my friends” (223).After Odysseus heats up the the large stake with a fiery tip and stabs it into the cyclops eye, Polyphemus screams
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Odysseus’s second stop was the land of the lotus eaters. The lotus eaters had no intention of violence and simply gave their lotus to Odysseus’s crew. What the crew and Odysseus didn’t know was the lotus acted as a drug. It was extremely addicting and when the crew ate the lotus they lost all desire return home. They would much rather stay with the fellow lotus eaters and eat lotus all day long. When it was time to go, the crew was not ready to leave, so Odysseus had to be ruthless about it. “But I brought them back, back to the hollow ships, and streaming tears- I forced them” (214). Later in the book when Odysseus and his men arrive at the island of Circe, they are forced to search the island firsthand, but not Odysseus. “And so, numbering off my band of men-at-arms into two platoons. Weeping, leaving us behind in tears as well” (236-237). Odysseus picks out a crew to go search the island. The crew is very hesitant because they know what will happen to them not knowing what is on the