The Greatest Prices Are Paid In The Odyssey

Have you ever been so afraid to face your fears, that you would simply avoid it, push it aside or ignore it? Throughout the epic poem “The Odyssey”, you learn how people run away from their fears. After twenty years of the great Greek hero Odysseus absence on the island of Ithaka, he fights to make his travel home and defeat whatever lies in his path. In the epic poem “The Odyssey”, the greatest prices are paid when a character doesn’t face their struggles and fears. This is shown by Odysseus’s crew with the bag of winds, his experience with the Cyclops, and with Penelope who never acts on her feelings of Odysseus absence.

When Odysseus’s crew opens the bag of winds that is key for how the greatest prices are paid through struggles and fears. While Odysseus was asleep his crew had a parley about the bag of winds and the narrator goes on to say, “Temptation had its way with my companions, and they untied the bag”(Homer 10. 51-52). In this quote, it talks about how Odysseus’s crew opened the bag of winds because they were so curious and only if Odysseus would have told them what was in the bag, the story could have gone another way. The only reason Odysseus kept what he knew to be in the bag, to

After Odysseus fights the Cyclops, he expresses, “Kyklops, if ever mortal man inquire how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye: Laertes son, whose home’s on Ithaca!”(9. 548-552). In this quote, it refers to how Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name so the Cyclops will know who took his eye out. The Odysseus should have faced and fought him instead of running up to him to tell him his name. The poem would have changed dramatically if he would have killed the Cyclops, and thus sparing him a little over 10 years of pain and absence caused by