The Hero Of Odysseus In Homer's The Odyssey

Twenty years of action and adventure, defeating creatures, surviving, and just trying to get back home. In The Odyssey by Homer, the hero Odysseus takes an arduous journey navigating through raging waters and defeating strenuous creatures in order to get back home with his crew to his wife and son in Ithaca. Odysseus goes through a variety of islands on the way, each including many characters he needs to overcome. Being clever and cunning in difficult situations with the Cyclops, Scylla, Sirens, Charybdis, and finally the suitors will lead to success and survival in the future.. The cleverness of Odysseus is first supplied when he brilliantly guides his men from the danger of being devoured by the unprepossessing beast, to safety

Odysseus and his crew would be trapped, and therefore starve or die of thirst inside the cave. After all the work he has gone through, he must have realized that it wasn't worth it to take the chance. Therefore, Odysseus thoroughly thought out this plan, and did not go through with murdering the beast at first sight. After some of his men are eaten, Odysseus quickly formulates a clever plan to escape and gain revenge by thrusting a giant spike into the one eye of Polyphemus, by first getting him drunk. After Odysseus claims that his name is nohbdy, and the spike is in his eye, the other cyclops ask who hurt him. He then replies with “‘Nohbdy, Nohbdy’s tricked me. Nohbdy’s ruined me!”’ (line 403). Because Polyphemus is not that intelligent, he does not realize that Odysseus has tricked him using a simple word pun. He has said his name is ‘nohbdy’ which sounds like ‘nobody’. The other cyclops’ think nobody has hurt him, so they just leave, because nothing seems to be wrong. Finally,

As the crew near the Sirens, Odysseus heeds Circe’s warnings. Circe shares the clever advice to and forces the crew to tie him to a mast so only he can listen to the taunting song of the creatures. Other than Odysseus, another character that exhibits cleverness is Circe, when she shares the advice to “lay (wax) thick on their ears” (745-746) so the crew will ignore the chanting voices. The group passes the Sirens with no losses because Odysseus discerningly heeds Circe’s ideaHowever, Odysseus knows that he will lose six lives of his people at minimum. This information, shared to him by Circe, leads him to the decision of either telling his crew that at least six of them will perish, or just not telling them at all. Odysseus again draws on his wits and “...told them nothing, as they could do nothing” (791). He makes this decision because there is honestly nothing he can do to spare their lives. Odysseus knows if he tells them at least six people will not make it home, they would immediately panic and stop rowing the ship. It would be hard for Odysseus to share this painful news, because even though he knows it's true, he might not want to believe it. The crew would have tried to hide and not get eaten, but fate could not be changed, so it was better if they found out along the way.