Odyssey 9: Story Number 9 Of Homer's Odyssey

Batoul Labban

Journal #11

• Odyssey 9: Story number 9 of Odyssey starts off explaining how Odysseus tells the Phaeacians his tragic story. Odysseus escapes the land but unfortunately lost 6 pf his friends. Before they were brought to the land of Lotus- Eaters, Zeus sent a large storm that lasted about nine days. Here Lotus-Eaters is where the citizens gave some of Odysseus’s friends the intoxicating fruit of “lotus”. When they ate these intoxicating fruit they basically forgot everything about home and just kept on eating more. The only way that they would get out of this was to lock them in the ship. At night, they sailed the land of Cyclopes and crossed the land. Suddenly they stopped near a cave that was not only full of sheep but also

Here he was told to attract the souls of the dead, the first dead soul to appear was Elpenor. Elpenor was the crewman who broke his neck when he fell from Circe’s roof. All he asks Odysseus to do is to give him an appropriate burial. After this Odysseus goes and speaks with Tiresias who says that the Achaeans are being punished for blinding Polyphemus. He tells Odysseus his destiny about how he will return home and return to his wife. He also mentions that if he were to touch the flocks of the sun when he lands in Thrinacia, then he won’t be able to return home without suffering hardships of the loss of his crew. When the blind prophet leaves Odysseus starts to talk to another dead soul which is his mother named Anticleia. She informs him on the affairs of Ithaca and how she was so traumatized waiting for him to return. Just around the time that he wanted to sleep the king and queen asked him if he met any Greeks who fell at Troy from Hades. He shares all the meetings he had. He met Agamemnon who tells him about his wife’s murder. Next he met Achilles who was curious about his son Neoptolemus. Odysseus then tries to speak Ajax who as a man who killed himself after he lost a challenge with Odysseus. He then sees Tantalus, someone that was suffering from hunger and thirst. Tantalus sits in a pool of water extended by grapes, but whenever he reaches for the grapes, they rise out of grip.

She starts to tell him the obstacles he will have on his journey. As he sets sail, he approaches the island of Sirens. For this Circe told him to plug the men’s ears and drag them all the way to the flagpole of the ship. When he starts to hear their song on the island he promises them to tell them the future. Once Odysseus and his friends pass the Siren’s island (where he heard the song), he has to direct the sounds between Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is a 6-headed monster who swallows on sailor for each head each time a ship passes him by. Meanwhile Charybdis is a massive “whirlpool” that threatens to swallow the whole ship. Just like Circe told him, Odysseus hold on tight against the faces of Scylla’s home. As Odysseus and his friends stare at Charybdis on the other side of the channel, Scylla immediately dives downs and devours up to six sailors. The next stop on Odysseus journey is Thrinacia which was known as the island of the sun. Odysseus wanted to skip this stop but Eurylochus encouraged him to let his tired crew rest here a little bit. Out of nowhere a storm kept them stranded on this island for about a month and the crew was a bit of happy having some supplies that were on the ship to make them survive. But when the supplies run out, Eurylochus convinces the other crew members to go against Odysseus and kill the cattle of the sun. They do