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Why Is Odysseus Forgetful

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In The Odyssey, Odysseus proves to be a weak leader by being overconfident in Book 9, forgetful in Book 10, dishonest in Book 12, and having a short temper in Books 21-23. Odysseus has been gone from home for twenty years. Ten years in the Trojan War, and ten years trying to get back home. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, has waited for her husband to return home, and has gotten to the point where she believed that her husband was dead. However, he was not dead. The reason that Odysseus has not returned home is because Polyphemus put a curse on him, which made his journey more brutal while trying to return home. At first, they did not believe the curse, but days passed and the curse started to become true. Odysseus wasted a year on an …show more content…

Odysseus showed this when they sailed to Aeaea, home of the goddess Circe. Once, Odysseus went to rescue his men from her, and drank the drink, which failed on him. Circe wanted him as her lover, Odysseus ended up sleeping with her but his mind was with his men. She gave him back his men, but she wanted him and his men to stay with her. He accepted her offer and stayed with her for one year, until one of his men reminded him about home. “Captain, shake off this trance, and think of home- if home indeed awaits us, if we shall ever see your own well- timbered hall on Ithaca.” (Homer, Book 10 Lines 183-185). After he heard this, he felt pain and decided it was time to go. When he told this to Circe, she told him that he must go to the underworld to talk to a blind prophet who will tell him how to get home. When she mentioned the underworld, it feared …show more content…

If he would have not lied to his men about the obstacles they would be facing, things probably would have ended very differently. Circe told him what types of obstacles he will encounter and what two paths he could take. Of course, Odysseus wanted to take difficult challenges, how to defeat Scylla and or the Charybdis, which can cause death. Due to what can happen, he decided not to tell men about difficult challenges that they have to do to return home. He does not want his men to panic because panicking can lead to a worse situation. The men survived The Sirens, but once they are close to the Scylla, Odysseus told them nothing. “I told them nothing, as they could do nothing. They would have dropped their oars again, in panic, to roll for cover under the decking.” (Homer, Book 12 Lines 161-164). Six of his were killed. Finally, they reached the island called Thrinacia. He told his men not to eat the cattle, but he did not mention what can happen if they do. Due to eating the cattle, all men on the ship died except for

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Similarly, Odysseus doesn’t communicate any of the information given to him by Circe. Odysseus is given two choices by Circe for the first part of the journey, sail close two different rocks, Scylla or Charybdis. While it is possible for the crew to avoid misfortunes by sailing near Charybdis, avoid when she sucks down the black water, Odysseus chooses to sail near Scylla where there is no avoiding the deaths of at least six crew members (12. 99-111). Additionally, Odysseus doesn’t fully take the advice of Circe and uses weaponry, even though Circe warns him not to arm himself no matter the circumstances (12. 234-235). Odysseus’ inability to fully follow directions proves his large ego, and belief that he can do no wrong.

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The natives there gave Odysseus and his men an intoxicating fruit of the lotus. After Odysseus and his men eat the fruit, they forget all of their thoughts about home and decide to eat more of the fruit. The only way that Odysseus can get him and his men back home is by dragging his men back to the ship and lock them up, Odysseus decides to go along with it. When Odysseus went back to Ithaca, He made the wise choice to go and see his wife Penelope. Odysseus was so brave to go see his wife because he didn’t know if she was going to recognize him at all or want to be with him for the rest of her life.

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In the novel The Odyssey, written by Homer, Odysseus is portrayed as a bad leader because of his selfish decisions and bad character. Odysseus makes a selfish decision when he leads his crew to stay in Polyphemus’s cave thinking he would offer gifts and Odysseus would “accept (his) help, or any gifts/” he had to “give” (9.726-727). This is a selfish act because he is putting his crew in danger for something that would only benefit himself. In the end, many of his people died and no one benefited. Once again, Odysseus displayed selfish acts when Circe told him “ he will be the only survivor of their long journey” (Homer 764).

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Odysseus’s dishonesty admitted that lying can get you to progress to where you want to be. To get his men motivated, Odysseus did not tell his crew that only he will survive the journey. Instead, Odysseus lied by getting their hopes up of returning home, when in the end he knows that they will not make it back. In order to achieve his objective, he did this to avoid losing everything but to obtain the significant help of his men. So rather than sailing toward Charybdis to lose all his men and the ship, he chose to sail toward Scylla to have a greater chance of coming

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(Book 10, page 159, PDF). Odysseus had left almost always meant to die with only saving a few which may have caused a sense of controversy and confusion. Also Odysseus hadn’t thought of a way to save all of his men, which eventually impacted his journey and his entire crew. Though Odysseus did have several acts of heroic deeds, the amount of failure in a majority of those other acts overpowered them

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