The Odyssey Rhetorical Analysis

How can a leader be decisive and have emotions cloud their decisions?The Odyssey is written about a hero named Odysseus and his journey home from Troy. In the epic poem The Odyssey written by Homer the poet who use language such as dialogue,imagery, and epic similes to demonstrate that Odysseus is a leader who is decisive but also has a lot of ego and battle rage that can cloud his decisions.In most situations he makes a decision and decides to follow through but why he makes the decision is because of his ego and him thinking he is the strongest and the best around.
To start off Homer uses dialogue to demonstrate that Odysseus makes a lot of moves out of ego.After Odysseus blinds the Cyclops and escapes in Book 9 he could either chose to go home safely or out of ego yell back at the Cyclops.He decides to yell back at the Cyclops when they are sailing away and yells “I began to taunt the Cyclops-men around me/trying to check me,calm me … “why rile the beast again?”/… “Cyclops/ if any man on the face of the earth should ask / who blinded you,shamed you so-say Odysseus””9.548-560.This results in the Cyclops praying to Poseidon to ruin them.At this point he is basically acting against all of his men which he did because he made a decision hence him being decisive.This does not help out though because Odysseus is only acting out of his ego which helps nobody and out of rage that the Cyclops killed his men .All of this shows …show more content…
Homer uses dialogue and an epic simile to prove that Odysseus’ anger and his selfishness and ego has a lot to do with his decisions like when he tried to see if he could fight Scylla or yelling back at the Cyclops despite his men telling him not to. It is important to look back at how violent and how human nature could cloud ancient leaders because violence can still be found today and not all leaders today are the best to represent their nation or