A Summary Of Odysseus In Homer's Odyssey '

The commanding officer of an army is usually responsible for his men and cares about them deeply. But in the second oldest piece of literature, The Odyssey, Odysseus puts the lives of others in danger and cares about himself. For example, when he decides to stay at the Cyclops’s cave, he put his men in danger and loses six of them, which could have been prevented. Furthermore, when Odysseus arrives to Helios’s island he makes his crew swear to him to not eat the cattle, which proves that he does not trust his men and he knows that they will die when they eat the cattle. Therefore, in The Odyssey, Odysseus’s men mostly die because of Odysseus’s mistakes and hubris. Odysseus is the leader and captain of his fleet; he is primarily responsible for the death of his men, especially when he leads them into the Cyclops’s cave. For example, when he decided to stay to see what the Cyclops had to offer his men disagreed with him and told him to take the food and leave. Then Odysseus says, “My men came …show more content…
While yelling this, Odysseus shows that he has too much pride or hubris. Odysseus’s trip is longer than it should be because the Cyclops prays to Poseidon to make Odysseus’s trip a lot longer and to make sure that all of his men die. If Odysseus’s ego had not gotten in the way of escaping, then he would have more men, and his journey to Ithaca would have been shorter. Also, Poseidon would have never have cursed Odysseus because he would have not known who attacked his son. This is how Odysseus is responsible for the deaths of his men because of his