Odysseus: The Hero In Homer's The Odyssey

Many people can agree that firefighters, policemen, and soldiers are heros. They all share similar redeeming qualities. Selflessness, bravery even when they’re scared out of their minds, and compassion. Saving people that they have never met, sticking to the moral code, and risking their lives for a greater cause. Whether it be saving one person, or saving hundreds. Usually nobody thinks about how these heroes in their everyday action, after a while they slowly become this heroic act. That is all people know about them and that’s all that they want to know. However, people who perform heroic acts aren’t always heros. In The Odyssey, Odysseus may have done a few honorable things here and there, but in this case he was not known for these. He

More times than not Odysseus told his men the absolute bare minimum of what they needed to know. Stating vague details that made the crew crave to know more, not leave whatever Odysseus was telling them alone. When Odysseus took a pit-stop at Aeolus’ island. The god of wind offered to help Odysseus with his troubles of getting back to Ithaca. Aeolus offered to help Odysseus, he gave him a bag of all of the bad winds that were pushing Odysseus farther and farther away from Ithaca, making the winds good and going in the right direction. When he got back on his ship, all he told his men was to not open up the bag, and he told them nothing else. Of course, all of them were incredibly curious and thought that Odysseus was keeping something precious a secret. Most of their minds went to treasure or something too precious to Odysseus to share.. “Within sight of home, and while/Odysseus is sleeping, the men open the bag, thinking it contains gold/and silver” (386). They got sent farther away than they were before. Now this isn’t the men's fault. It is the lack of trust and communication from Odysseus. On Helios’ island, the sun god, Odysseus said not to eat any of the sun gods cattle on their island. In fact, he didn’t want to land on the island at all. However, his men insisted. They were starving and had little supplies

Odysseus was constantly full of himself and boasting, taking ideas that he got directly from the gods and not thanking them, then going around and blaming every little thing that goes wrong on the gods. It’s not as if this only happened once or twice and Odysseus immediately got down on his hands and knees to beg for forgiveness, it kept on happening time on time again, and he didn’t have a clue in his mind that It might be the reason that his men keep on getting magically killed. When his curiosity lead him to the Cyclopes island and into Polyphemus’ cave, it was actually Athena that saved him and his crew. She put a felled olive tree inside of Polyphemus’ cave, letting Odysseus to be able to get a major hint from the gods on what to do next. However, when it came time for him to boast about it, he yelled: “‘Cyclops,/if ever a mortal man inquire how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him/Odysseus…, took your eye” (416-419) Not only taking complete credit for the event, but not even thanking the gods for helping him. Instead he ended up getting himself cursed! While Odysseus was praying to the gods on Helios’ island, he fell asleep. This was when his men went ahead and feasted on Helios’ cattle. Knowing Odysseus, he immediately blamed them gods upon his wakening. Saying that they made him fall asleep. Whenever the gods do