Throughout the story of The Odyssey Odysseus makes many questionable decisions that affect more than just himself. Whether that be, being selfish, or simply withholding essential information from his crew, he seems to choose wrong almost every time. Odysseus is an extremely flawed character who makes his journey home much harder than it has to be, his poor judgment extends his treacherous journey back to Ithaca immensely. One of his most flawed decisions is when he didn't tell his crew what was in the bag from Aeolus and ended up elongating their journey home by years.
On Aeolia, Odysseus was given a bag of winds to help him and his crew return home to Ithaca at a quicker pace. I do not support Odysseus' thought to not tell his crew what the bag from Aeolus contained. The shipmates talked among one another about the bag and said, “‘We shared the journey...yet we come back home with empty hands…we should look in the bag’”(Wilson). They suspected that Odysseus was given a fortune of gold and silver and decided to open the bag. Opening the bag containing the west winds forced them back to Aeolus’ island. If Odysseus had thought to share some basic knowledge of what was in the bag with his crew they could have returned home much quicker and would have avoided losing many members of
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It’s even revealed that the men feel overworked and tired under his leadership, this is shown when Eurylochus said, “‘You are unfair to us...we men have had no rest or sleep and you refuse to let us disembark’”(Wilson). The one instance when the shipmates might be considered untrustworthy is when they eat the cattle of Helios after being told not to or else they will perish. The crew choose to eat meat and seek forgiveness instead of facing a lonely death at sea, demonstrating kleos, not necessarily
In Homer’s The Odyssey, the deaths of Odysseus’ men should not be blamed on Odysseus. “The men open the bag, thinking it contains gold and silver, The bad winds escape and blow the ships back to Aeolus’ island.” The men blow them back to the island when they were almost home. They would have made it if Odysseus’ men weren’t greedy and tried to steal from Odysseus.
In the first instances of drastic changes to Odysseus mental state they are severely influenced by physicality of home. One example occurs as Odysseus and his crew are given a magical ship that would take them directly to Ithaca. The fact that Odysseus does not tell his men what is in the bag reveals that he holds the contents of the bag very highly, so much so that he even has this underlying paranoia against his esteemed crew. This secret would untimely lead to the downfall of this attempt home, which causes a rift in Odysseus’s mental state. As the bag of winds ruptures open and the crew is forced away from Ithaca, Odysseus contemplates suicide.
The only reason Odysseus kept what he knew to be in the bag, to
This harms Odysseus, as he is unable to maintain the crew's trust and loyalty. These decisions highlight Odysseus’s tendency to prioritize dominance, which leads to his failure to return home on
The first evident part was at the island of Cicones, when Odysseus’s men plundered the town, they partied until dawn when the enemy horseback army came and killed half of Odysseus’s men. Another time when Odysseus loses control of his men is at Aeolia when the king Aeolus gives Odysseus a bag of winds containing all the winds except the one Odysseus needed. When Odysseus set sailed, he didn’t tell his men what was in the bag, and they thought it was gold. When Odysseus reached Ithaca, his men opened the bag and it blew them off course back to Aeolia. Another instant of Odysseus’s lack of organization is when he left a man dead back at Aaea, in which Odysseus finds out about it in the Land of the Dead.
As a leader, Odysseus has to be resilient and firm but he is falling into too many traps. Nonetheless, he is a tenacious man who is focused to arrive in Ithaca. When King Aeolus captured the winds and gave it to him so it could blow them straight on their course for home, he stays up for nine days, determined that nothing will get in his way of arriving back home. Although they sight Ithaca in the distance, Odysseus' men open the bag while he sleeps because they speculate that King Aeolus gave him gold and riches. Once the bag opens, the gust of wind throws them off course and pushes them back to Aeolia.
The crew and Odysseus went to Aiolos to ask for help. He gave them a bag of wind, but the crew thought there was gold and silver. So, the crew opened the bag behind Odysseus’s back: “I say we ought to crack that bag, / there’s gold and silver, plenty, in that bag!’ / Temptation had its way with my companions, and they untied the bag” (X.49-52). By the crew deciding to “crack that bag” hoping that there’s
In the Odyssey, Odysseus let's six of his men get taken by Scylla. In the story Scylla and Charybdis, at line 810 it says “ Then Scylla made her strike, whisking away six of my best men from the ship.” When Odysseus and his crew were on their way to Ithaka, he does not tell his crew how long they will be staying on each island. Odysseus also does not tell his crew about what lies ahead of them. Odysseus’ crew getting taken by Scylla shows that he is selfish in the story at line 810 it says “... and caught the sight of their arms and legs, dangling high overhead.
Odysseus’s dishonesty admitted that lying can get you to progress to where you want to be. To get his men motivated, Odysseus did not tell his crew that only he will survive the journey. Instead, Odysseus lied by getting their hopes up of returning home, when in the end he knows that they will not make it back. In order to achieve his objective, he did this to avoid losing everything but to obtain the significant help of his men. So rather than sailing toward Charybdis to lose all his men and the ship, he chose to sail toward Scylla to have a greater chance of coming
However, this wind came with one request which was to not open the bag which Odysseus understood and did as he wanted. Whereas it was the men that decided to open the bag and disobey the orders. Additionally, they were sent back to Aeolus and he wasn’t so welcoming this time. ‘’I’m not going to help a man they hate’’ (Cross 55).
On the 10th our own land hove into sight… but now an enticing sleep came onto me, bone weary from working the vessels sheet myself, not let up never testing the ropes to any other male…” (book 10, page 156, PDF). Odysseus’ pride made him a self-centered leader, and he didn’t allow his men to contribute to their returning of home. Odysseus was too full of pride to allow anyone else to take credit for his doing of bringing all of his men back home, which eventually caused his men to betray him. Odysseus was very boastful, and a man full of extreme pride. From this we can grasp that he had an elaborate way of trying to achieve his goals, which usually involved only him and not allowing anyone else to contribute to his actions and
During these trials, many burdens were put on Odysseus’ crew, which led to all of his crew eventually all being killed before returning to Ithaca. The 2nd instance where Odysseus made a wrong choice that affected his crew is when he didn’t even really trust his crew. So he stayed up for days straight and
“When at last I spoke of leaving, and asked him for help on our way, he was glad to consent, and did everything he could. He gave me the skin of a nine-year ox, which he flayed for us and made into a bag; and in this he bottled up the blustering winds”(Homer 120). Odysseus knows that neither he nor the crew should open the bag. The crew of Odysseus opens it regardless, and Aeolus discovers that the crew floats back
“ The inhabitants met them (Odysseus and crew men) with kindness and gave them their flower-food to eat, but those who tasted it, only a few fortunately, lost their longing for home.” Odysseus was forced to drag and chain his crew men to his ship because they lost their feelings for going home because of the flower-food (220). Wind spells that brought Odysseus and his crew to near death situations. Odysseus and his crew thought that the bag was full of gold and they opened it, would rushed out at once and swept them away in terror. “They thought the carefully stored bag was probably full of gold; at any rate, they wanted to see what was in it.
Odysseus didn 't even ask his crew whether they should do it or not because Odysseus made it seem like their opinion wasn’t important and didn 't matter. In the story, it says “Why not take these cheeses... Yet I refused, I wished to see the cave man, what he had to offer” (pg 818 L198-199). Odysseus deserved to return home from his journey after 20 years because it was mostly his fault. If Odysseus had told his crew about everything like why not to eat the cattle or to not open the bag of the unfavorable winds, his journey wouldn 't have taken 20 years.