Odysseus Techniques Used For Survival In Homer's The Odyssey

“A bad system can destroy good people,” (Gary Mottershead). In the epic poem The Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus has many obstacles that he is determined to overcome with or without his crew. The story shows Odysseus’s long journey home and the problems he encounters. Meanwhile, his son, Telemachos, is faced with the struggle of protecting his mother, Penelopeia, from suitors and trying to find out if Odysseus is alive. Homer uses the literary devices: symbolism, similes, and epithets to help explain the story more thoroughly and provide more underlying meaning to the epic. Odysseus’s narrow-minded way of handling difficult situations by getting past the obstacle even if other people have to die along the way for his own survival make him an incompetent leader and an unfaithful husband.

Before Odysseus and his starving men landed on an island with cattle, Circe instructs to Odysseus, “‘There are his cattle and seven fine flocks of sheep… If you leave these alone and attend to the business of getting home, you may yet reach Ithaca,’” (152) Once on the island, Odysseus leaves the group and they eat the cattle. The cattle and sheep represent temptation, and Odysseus was not able to keep his men from it. An effective leader would have known that the starving men should not be left alone, and would have stayed to make sure that they had plenty of food and were not left with fat cattle. Odysseus was personally strong enough to keep away from this temptation, but a leader does not just look after himself. The entire crew was his responsibility to make sure that they remained safe, and Odysseus not only put his crew in a position to get killed, but did so with prior knowledge of the situation. The animals symbolizing temptation show Odysseus’s bad leadership, but Homer also uses similes to exemplify Odysseus’s