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Polyphemus Vs Odysseus Research Paper

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MYP Assessment - Polyphemus v. Odysseus

The lawsuit should move forward. This is because the soldiers wanted to steal Polyphemus’s food and sheep, and Odysseus could have just left the cave without ever encountering the Cyclops and saved the lives of his men. Odysseus says that the soldiers were pleading, “‘Why not take these cheeses, get them stowed, come back, throw open all the pens, and make a run for it? We’ll drive the kids and lambs aboard. We say put out again on good salt water!’”(988). Another reason why is because it was also Odysseus’s idea to stay in the cave and wait for a monster to return. Odysseus states, “‘Ah, how sound that was! Yet I refused. I wished to see the cave man, what he had to offer - no pretty sight, it turned …show more content…

The law says that anyone can go inside another person’s home and ask for food and shelter and expect to receive it. Odysseus has stretched the bounds of hospitality too far by making the decision to take everything from the cave and leave, without giving any gifts or being humble to his ‘host’. This would not be following the law, but violating it. He not only planned to steal the food and sheep, but he threatened Polyphemus in his own home that the gods would punish him if he did not take care of Odysseus. Odysseus could have also avoided the encounter with Polyphemus entirely had he decided to just take the food and leave without waiting for the cyclops to arrive, sparing him his men. Lastly, by eating Odysseus’s men out of anger, Polyphemus can declare that he did so in self-defense because Odysseus tried to steal his things. Not only can he declare this self-defense, Polyphemus is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea. This means that he is part god, part cyclops. Even if Polyphemus killed his ‘guests’, he is not in the wrong for doing so because the Law of Hospitality never specifies if it should only be followed by man or

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