What Characteristics Make Odysseus a Hero

What is a hero? Is it someone who acts as a fool, at times, or is it someone who is courageous and intelligent? In Homer’s The Odyssey, the epic hero Odysseus faces several impediments during his 20 year journey from home. He first had to leave his wife and newborn son to go fight in the Trojan War for 10 years. Odysseus won the war, but he faced many obstacles on his way back home. He encountered the cyclops, Polyphemus, the six headed monster, Scylla, and finally Calypso, the beautiful sea nymph. After 20 years, Odysseus finally reaches home, but finds himself in a huge ordeal with the suitors. Through all of this, Odysseus shows indomitable characteristics and qualities of a hero, such as intelligence, loyalty, and bravery.

Odysseus displayed intelligence several times, but in “The Cyclops,'' Odysseus shows prominent intellect. Odysseus first creates a plan to get his crew out of Polyphemus’s captivity. After Polyphemus goes to sleep on the first day, Odysseus’s first thought is to kill him but decided against it. He thought that if he “killed him, they perished there as well, for they could never move his ponderous doorway slab aside”. After night passes and morning comes, Polyphemus leaves to do his errands and Odysseus decides to create a spike to poke out Polyphemus’s one eye. Odysseus first gets him drunk so that when he asks Odysseus further questions, Odysseus would be able to fool him; this is another tactic that Odysseus uses in order to keep himself and his men safe. As said, he is asked what his name is, and he replies with “Nohbdy”. Polyphemus does not recognize the name, as Odysseus predicted. It was momentous for him to know Odysseus’s name because he would have known to protect himself from Odysseus, as the prophet Telemus warned him. After Polyphemus passes out from the wine, Odysseus and several of his men poke his eye out with the olive tree spike. While Polyphemus opens the rock slab to holler for the help of other Cyclopes, Odysseus tells his men to tie themselves to the bottom of the rams. He tells them to do this because he knew that Polyphemus would only be able to sense his men through touch, thus letting them escape. This demonstrates Odysseus’s intelligence and intellect because he is quick-witted to respond with a false name. Intelligence is one of Odysseus’s most prominent qualities because he took certain actions that kept himself and crew safe in the minacious situation with Polyphemus. On the contrary, Odysseus was acting boastful after he escaped Polyphemus’s cave. He was acting this way towards Polyphemus by saying things such “how do you like the beating we gave you, you damned cannibal? Eater of guests under your roof”. This supports that Odysseus is a fool because after Odysseus taunted Polyphemus, the cyclops prayed to Poseidon to make sure Odysseus “lost all companions, and return under strange sail to bitter days at home” (Homer 909). This is said to be one of Odysseus’s flaws as a hero. He tends to be arrogant and prideful throughout the beginning of his journey which results in a very long way home.

Loyalty is also one of the most important qualities of a hero, including Odysseus. Odysseus stays loyal to his crew until every last one of them dies. When Odysseus and his men get stranded on Circe the witch’s island, several of the men find Circe’s cave and all but one, Eurylochus, go in. Circe makes sure that the ones who entered are relaxed so that when she gave them a drink, it would turn them into swine, or pigs. The reason for her doing is because the men were not being hospitable to her and her island. Eurylochus then tells runs to Odysseus to tell him what happened to his men. He then heroically goes to Circe’s cave, against what Eurylochus says of the dangers. Luckily for Odysseus, the Greek god Hermes, the messenger god, gives Odysseus a herb, which is from Athena, to protect him from Circe’s spell. When Odysseus arrives, Circe gives him the drink and to her surprise, it does not work on him, and he threatens to kill her with his knife. In the end, she turns his men back to men and gives them advice on where to go next with a new ship and goods. Another time Odysseus showed loyalty was when he saw his dead comrade, Elpenor, in the Underworld. Elpenor wanted Odysseus to promise him to give him a proper Greek burial and to not forget him. Odysseus did as promised which is what loyalty is. Loyalty is where one can give solidified and persistent encouragement and devotion to another. Odysseus was loyal to his men until the very end. He rescued them from Circe and Polyphemus using his intelligence and courage and kept his word to Elpenor. In spite of Odysseus being loyal to his men, he wasn’t always respectful to the gods, especially Poseidon. After the Trojan War, he was very prideful and arrogant. He believed he didn’t need to make a sacrifice to the gods after they helped him with the victory, but this angered the gods and in return, they give him a strenuous journey home. Odysseus was hubristic with his comrades, as well, when he said that they “were mutinous, fools, on stores of wine. Sheep after sheep they butchered by the surf, and shambling cattle, feasting” when they invade the Ciones people in “I am Laertes Son”. He was using them as a scapegoat for his mistake of letting them do whatever they want; he also did not consider the fact that they have been through a lot on their journey home and during the 10-year war. Not being a strong leader is one of Odysseus’s main flaws.

Through all of this, Odysseus is still brave and courageous. He demonstrates this when he and his men face the two sirens: Scylla and Charybdis. Circe warns Odysseus to “plug his oarsmen’s ears with beeswax” so that they would not fall into the trap of sirens and if he decides not to put in the beeswax, he should then tie himself up. When Circe describes the sirens, it panics Odysseus and he understands that if he shows this fear to his comrades, they will begin to panic as well, which may have caused destruction. After they leave Circe’s island, Odysseus tells his men to put in the beeswax although he doesn’t do it himself; this means that he must tie himself up in order to protect the crew from him doing something reckless. “Then Scylla made her strike, whisking six of his best men from the ship… She ate then as they shrieked there, in her den… reaching still for me — and deathly pit ran Odysseus through at that sight — far the worst he ever suffered”. This shows that sacrificing of his best six men was a tremendous deal for Odysseus, but he knew he was doing it for the good of others, and himself. On the other hand, while Odysseus was able to control his men and show bravery through this event, he displayed another flaw of doing just the opposite in another. In “The Cattle of the Sun God”, Odysseus tells his men to not consume the cattle at Thrinakia, but they do otherwise. “They have killed Helios’s peaceful kine”. Odysseus begs them to “listen to what he says” but the men do not and continue feasting. By lacking this leadership, it caused the deaths of his men for when Zues had to kill them in order to keep Helios from revenge. If Odysseus had been able to get his men under control, it might have saved him headaches and complications.

For the most part, Odysseus denotes intelligence, loyalty, and bravery throughout the entire epic poem, which are indomitable characteristics and qualities of a hero. He goes through a great deal of pain on his journey back home but me managed to stay loyal to his crew by displaying bravery and intelligence. For this, Odysseus will always be a hero in the eyes of who think his actions were simply heroic.