Theme Of Power In The Odyssey

What it means to be powerful is to be able to control people, or beat people with your physical and mental strength.

In book 9 of the Odyssey, Odysseus slays a giant cyclops that is far bigger and stronger than him. Although the Cyclops is stronger than him, Odysseus can use his brain to defeat the Cyclops. Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk and then attacks. Homer wrights “I grasped the steak and thrust it into the ashes to make it hot and encouraged my men saying be of good heart my friends for we shall see the light of day, though we are not now in utter darkness, for this is the only way out of the cave. Then I thrust the steak of olive wood into his eye and leaning on it with all my weight, I turned it round and round” (Homer 9). In this

The skill of wielding weapons shows physical strength in the sense that he can control a dangerous weapon in his favor making people afraid of him and causing them to be at a disadvantage of his power. Odysseus’s power of skill is demonstrated through these lines, “then, as a barge strikes his harp upon his knee and draws the strings to a sweet sound, with such ease did Odysseus string the Great Beau. Holding it now in his right hand he tried the string, and it's saying sweetly at his touch like a swallow's note. And with a nod of his head, he signaled to Telemachus to put the access out in a line and the young man took them and sat them in a long row, each man standing by his own acts then Odysseus took the bow into his left hand and the arrow, which was heavy and bard, in his right, he drew the string not in vain, but with such strength that the arrow passed through every one of the ax heads and sank deeply into the trunk of the tree” (Homer 21). Odysseus's skill with the bow shows the shooters that he is the most talented with the weapon there. Of course, the suitors that are there still do not know that the old man is Odysseus, but still he has proven that he is the one to be