How Does Odysseus Show Courage

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Courageous Odysseus No one except Odysseus has had enough courage to take down a giant, row past a monster, and fight their enemies. In Homer‘s epic poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus is a man who goes on a persistent journey home from war. The journey is full of challenges and death, but in the end, he gets home. Through Odysseus outsmarting the Cyclops, fighting against the suitors, and getting past Scylla, The Odyssey shows that courage is necessary to save lives. Odysseus displays much courage when he outsmarts a Cyclops. After the Cyclops passes out, Odysseus and his crew get ready to stab him, and Odyssus states, “My crew stood firm: some god was breathing courage into us. They took the olive spear, its tip all sharp, and shoved it into his eye” (Homer, 252, 380-383). It relates to the assertion …show more content…

Odysseus gets drunk, and the Cyclops pass out. Once the Cyclops passed out, it made it much easier to get the spear in his eye. It takes much courage to hurt the Cyclops, because if the Cyclops caught them, he would have killed Odysseus. However, this is not the only example of courage in the story. We see courage again when Odysseus and his crew journey across the vicious sea. There is a gigantic leap of courage by Odysseus when he and his crew row past Scylla, the six-headed monster, and she takes six of his men. When she takes the men Odysseus states, “Scylla snatches six men from the ship, my strongest best fighters. Looking back from down below, I saw their feet and hands up high, as they were carried off.” (Homer, 309, 245-248). Odysseus showed much courage through this section of the book because he had prior knowledge of the perils, but kept going on his journey anyway. It was hard for Odysseus to lose his men, but if he had chosen another route, he would have never gotten home, and everyone on his ship would have died. Any decision that Odysseus would have made, would come with

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How Does Odysseus Show Courage