Why Is Odysseus An Epic Hero

Odysseus is an epic hero for many reasons, but the main reasons why he qualifies for being an epic hero is because he fought for his life to save his shipmates. “He saw the townlands and learned the minds of many distant men, and weathered many bitter nights and days in his deep heart at sea while he fought only to save his life, to bring his shipmates home”( FitzGerald page 1). Another reason why he qualifies to be an epic hero is that epic hero has to make difficult decisions and odyssey did have to make difficult decisions to get back home. The difficult decision he had to make was if should go through Scylla's or Charybdis; Scylla's was the monster that only ate six of his men and Charybdis was the monster that ate everyone on the ship that was a tough decision to make, but he managed to get through it. However, he doesn’t have all the characteristics of an epic hero so that does not qualify him as an epic hero. …show more content…
That definitely does not qualify him as an epic hero because if he were to be a real hero, he would only care for the others life and not his own. Another trait that doesn’t qualify him as an epic hero is that when he was making the decision of going through Scylla's path or Charybdis path he made the mistake of going through Scylla's path a true epic hero would take Charybdis path because that’s the path that the monster kills all because a captain always ways one for all and all for one means if one goes we all go. He also kills all the suitors without letting them speak for themselves a real epic hero would let them explain why they were there and not just kill them without letting them speak. Unusually odysseys had a quite an unexpected mix of both traits that do qualify him as an epic hero and that don’t qualify him as an epic