Why does odysseus blind the cyclops

The protagonist in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey is Odysseus, King of Ithaca. The poem describes the great journey Odysseus has to make back home after Troy has fallen. Odysseus encounters many setbacks and must overcome many hurdles to continue on his journey.

One of those encounters is with a giant cyclops named Polyphemus.

Odysseus Lands on the Island of the Cyclops

As Odysseus and his crew are sailing back from Troy, they are swept to many lands. One of the lands is an island inhabited by cyclops people. Cyclops only had one eye and would eat humans at any given opportunity.

As Odysseus and his men traveled throughout the island, they came upon a cave. The cave provided Odysseus and his men shelter, food, and drink from their travels, so they gladly took advantage of this new discovery.

After eating, drinking, and resting, Odysseus and his men fell asleep in the cave, only to be awoken by a giant cyclops named Polyphemus.

Odysseus Encounters Polyphemus

As Polyphemus entered the cave, he led his flock of sheep inside and rolled a stone in front of the entrance of the cave to seal it shut. Polyphemus quickly noticed Odysseus and his men had made themselves at home in the cave. This infuriated Polyphemus. He quickly smashed in the heads of two of the men and devoured them.

Odysseus knew the giant cyclops possessed great strength, greater than he was able to battle. Odysseus and the remainder of his men survived the night in the cave with the cyclops.

The Next Morning

When Polyphemus awoke the next morning, he smashed in the heads of two more men and ate them for breakfast. At this point, Odysseus knew the only way to defeat the cyclops and make it out of the cave alive would be to outsmart him.

After eating the men for breakfast, Polyphemus rolled the stone from the entrance of the cave and led his flock of sheep out of the cave. Then, Polyphemus rolled the stone back in front of the cave to seal it shut with Odysseus and the remainder of his men inside.

Once Polyphemus had left, Odysseus and his men came up with a plan to defeat the cyclops. They found a large log and made a sharp spear out of one end. They hid their new weapon and waited for Polyphemus to return.

“Nobody” Gives Polyphemus Wine

Polyphemus returns that evening with his flock of sheep and enters the cave, sealing the entrance of the cave with the large stone. Polyphemus smashed in the heads of two more men and ate them. This time, Odysseus was ready.

He asked Polyphemus if he would like some of the wine he had brought with him on his journey. Polyphemus accepted the wine and thanked him for it, asking Odysseus his name. Odysseus replied, “Nobody,” and Polyphemus took him literally.

Polyphemus never had drunk wine before, and the amount of wine he drank made him drunk. Polyphemus passed out in drunkenness, so Odysseus and his remaining men put their plan into action.

“Nobody” Defeats the Cyclops

As Polyphemus had fallen asleep from the wine, Odysseus and his remaining men took their log and heated the end of the log that contained the sharpened spear by placing it over the fire. When the spear had heated and was glowing bright red, they carried the log over to the sleeping Polyphemus and, with all their might, pierced the eye of the cyclops to blind him.

Polyphemus screamed in pain loud enough to cause the nearby cyclops to come to check on him. When asked who was hurting him, Polyphemus screamed, “Nobody!” thinking this was Odysseus’s real name. Instead of helping Polyphemus, the cyclops returned to where they sleep.

Odysseus and His Men Escape

The next morning, Polyphemus led his flock of sheep out of the cave. Knowing that Polyphemus would inspect the sheep before they left, Odysseus and his men tied themselves to the belly of the sheep.

When the sheep began walking out of the cave, Polyphemus touched the back of the sheep one-by-one as they exited. Not feeling any of the men on the backs of the sheep, Polyphemus continued to lead the sheep out of the cave, unknowing that Odysseus and his men had outsmarted the cyclops by hiding underneath the bellies of the sheep.

Odysseus is Nobody

As Odysseus and his men escaped the cave on the bellies of the sheep, they ran to their ship to sail away from the island of the cyclops. As they boarded their boat and pushed off into the sea, Odysseus revealed his true identity to Polyphemus.

It was not “Nobody” that had blinded him. Instead, it was Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who had defeated him!

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Reluctantly, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians the sorry tale of his wanderings. From Troy, the winds sweep him and his men to Ismarus, city of the Cicones. The men plunder the land and, carried away by greed, stay until the reinforced ranks of the Cicones turn on them and attack. Odysseus and his crew finally escape, having lost six men per ship. A storm sent by Zeus sweeps them along for nine days before bringing them to the land of the Lotus-eaters, where the natives give some of Odysseus’s men the intoxicating fruit of the lotus. As soon as they eat this fruit, they lose all thoughts of home and long for nothing more than to stay there eating more fruit. Only by dragging his men back to the ship and locking them up can Odysseus get them off the island.

Odysseus and his men then sail through the murky night to the land of the Cyclops, a rough and uncivilized race of one-eyed giants. After making a meal of wild goats captured on an island offshore, they cross to the mainland. There they immediately come upon a cave full of sheep and crates of milk and cheese. The men advise Odysseus to snatch some of the food and hurry off, but, to his and his crew’s detriment, he decides to linger. The cave’s inhabitant soon returns—it is the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon. Polyphemus makes a show of hospitality at first, but he soon turns hostile. He devours two of Odysseus’s men on the spot and imprisons Odysseus and the rest in his cave for future meals.

Odysseus wants to take his sword to Polyphemus right then, but he knows that only Polyphemus is strong enough to move the rock that he has placed across the door of his cave. Odysseus thus devises and executes a plan. The next day, while Polyphemus is outside pasturing his sheep, Odysseus finds a wooden staff in the cave and hardens it in the fire. When Polyphemus returns, Odysseus gets him drunk on wine that he brought along from the ship. Feeling jovial, Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name. Odysseus replies that his name is “Nobody” (9.410). As soon as Polyphemus collapses with intoxication, Odysseus and a select group of his men drive the red-hot staff into his eye. Polyphemus wakes with a shriek, and his neighbors come to see what is wrong, but they leave as soon as he calls out, “Nobody’s killing me” (9.455). When morning comes, Odysseus and his men escape from the cave, unseen by the blind Polyphemus, by clinging to the bellies of the monster’s sheep as they go out to graze. Safe on board their ships and with Polyphemus’s flock on board as well, Odysseus calls to land and reveals his true identity. With his former prisoners now out of reach, the blind giant lifts up a prayer to his father, Poseidon, calling for vengeance on Odysseus.

Analysis

Books 9 through 12 are told as flashbacks, as Odysseus sits in the palace of the Phaeacians telling the story of his wanderings. These books thus give background not only to Odysseus’s audience but to Homer’s as well. Providing some of the richest and most celebrated examples of Odyssean cunning, they speak as much to the resourcefulness of the poet, who uses Odysseus’s voice to render a more complete picture of his hero’s wanderings, as to that of the hero himself. The foreboding that Odysseus feels as he heads toward the cave, which seems to prompt him to take the wine along, foreshadows his upcoming encounter with Polyphemus and the need for trickery to prevail. Once Homer establishes the conflict between Odysseus and Polyphemus, he unveils Odysseus’s escape plan slowly and subtly: the significance of Odysseus’s blinding of Polyphemus becomes clear when Polyphemus lets his sheep out to graze the next morning; similarly, Odysseus’s curious lie about his name seems nonsense at first but adds a clever and humorous twist to the necessity of keeping the other Cyclops from rescuing Polyphemus.

Odysseus’s eventual revelation of his identity to Polyphemus ultimately proves foolish, and, because it embodies a lack of foresight, stands in stark contrast to the cunning prudence that Odysseus displays in his plan to escape from the cave. Though his anger at Polyphemus for devouring his shipmates is certainly understandable, and though Polyphemus’s blind rock-throwing fury eggs him on, Odysseus’s taunts are unnecessary. By telling Polyphemus his name, Odysseus pits his mortal indignation against Poseidon’s divine vengeance. This act of hubris, or excessive pride, ensures almost automatically that Odysseus will suffer grave consequences. Indeed, his eventual punishment costs him dearly: Poseidon’s anger wipes away the very thing that he gains by cleverly obscuring his name—the safety of his men.

The form that Odysseus’s revelation of his identity takes is interesting, as it represents the cultural values of ancient Greece. Odysseus doesn’t simply utter his name; rather, he attaches to it an epithet, or short, descriptive title (“raider of cities”), his immediate paternal ancestry (“Laertes’s son”), and a reference to his homeland (“who makes his home in Ithaca”) (9.561–562). This manner of introduction was very formalized and formulaic in Homeric Greece and should seem familiar to readers of The Iliad. Odysseus is here going through the motions of confirming his kleos (the glory or renown that one earns in the eyes of others by performing great deeds). He wants to make sure that people know that he was the one who blinded Polyphemus, explicitly instructing Polyphemus to make others aware of his act. Like the heroes of The Iliad, Odysseus believes that the height of glory is achieved by spreading his name abroad through great deeds.

For all of his stupidity and brutishness, Polyphemus strikes some commentators as vaguely sympathetic at the end of Book 9. They point to the pitiful prayer that he offers to his father, Poseidon, and his warm treatment of his beloved sheep, who are soon to be devoured by Odysseus and his men. He caresses each wooly back as it passes out of his cave, and it is difficult not to pity him when he gives special attention to his faithful lead ram. Homer notes that, “[s]troking him gently, powerful Polyphemus murmured, / ‘Dear old ram, why last of the flock to quit the cave?’” (9.497–498). The juxtaposition of “gently” and “powerful” and the poetically stated question illustrate that, despite his monstrousness, Polyphemus is somewhat tenderhearted. Additionally, in pondering why the ram is the last to leave the cave, Polyphemus attributes a human capacity for sympathy to him (“Sick at heart for your master’s eye” [9.505]). His tenderness is all the more endearing for his ignorance—he is wholly unaware of Odysseus’s cunning. Though Homeric culture praised Odysseus for his characteristic cunning, others have criticized him for this quality, perceiving his tactics as conniving, underhanded, dishonest, and even cowardly. Dante, for example, in the Inferno, relegates Odysseus to the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell—the realm reserved for those guilty of Spiritual Theft—because of his treachery in the Trojan horse episode that enabled him to slaughter the unwitting Trojans.