Examples Of Arrogance In The Odyssey

Textual Analysis: The Cunning Defeats the Arrogance, or How the Cyclop Shows Arrogance Describing Odysseus The Odyssey, one of the poems about the Trojan War and its effects on people, presents many interesting characters, and one of the most interesting characters is undoubtedly the protagonist, Odysseus. Odysseus is a hero with a lot of virtues, but at the same a time many flaws, with the capability of developing admiration among others, but with the same ability to develop hate feelings in the others as well. The extract from The Odyssey that will be analyzed following describes precisely a moment of revelation of another interesting character, the Cyclop, when he realizes that Odysseus was the responsible of his terrible fate. On this …show more content…
“I always expected a great hero” is a phrase that demonstrates that for the Cyclop only a “great hero” could defeat him. But most important is the vision of the Cyclop about what was the main characteristic of a great hero: the strength. “Would come here, strong as can be” confirms that the strength was the main expectation on that hero to defeat. The poet demonstrated the strength of our hero before in the book, and this specific incident was an opportunity to reinforce that a hero with strength but with lack of cleverness was not a complete hero. Odysseus showed cunning using Cyclop’s weaknesses to take advantage and overcome him. The Cyclop continues with a negative description of Odysseus: “Now this puny, little, god-for-nothing runt”. Puny is used to describe a very weak people and the Cyclop considered that Odysseus was that. The Cyclop, a being of monstrous dimensions, might consider any human as small. But his hubris is evident with the last epithet used to describe Odysseus: “god-for-nothing runt”. Cyclope already called Odysseus little, but he uses runt as an additional description for Odysseus, as a really small and insignificant human being. “god-for-nothing” is another remarkable idea about the preconception of the Cyclop about Odysseus. When he waited for a “great hero”, he was waiting …show more content…
The Cyclop does not consider that victory as a great victory, in fact, one can possibly think that for the Cyclop is just a insignificant victory. “because he got me drunk” represents the lack of heroic acts since Cyclop’s perspective. He was defeated by a hoax, he was not defeated in a battle; he was defeated by an intelligent man and not for a