Thursday, October 6, 2016
I'll Follow You to Hell and Back -- Odysseus as a Leader
Odysseus leaves Troy with nine ships full of men. By the time he is rescued by Calypso, however, all his men have perished. His men are killed by Ciconians, Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians. Yet at the same time, he rescues his men from Polyphemus' cave and Circe's enchantment. Is Odysseus a good leader who is just cursed by the gods? A good leader with a mutinous crew? Or is he a poor leader who causes his own problems because of misplaced ideals, or reckless behavior or poor leadership skills? Or perhaps somewhere in between or none of the above? Explain your answer using examples from the text to support your point.
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Odysseus is a mediocre leader who has a mutinous crew and is cursed by the gods. When Odysseus and his crew come across the Island of the Sun, one of Odysseus’s outspoken shipmates, Eurylochus, demands that they should stay on the island to rest. Odysseus obliges his demands, but he makes his crew swear a solemn oath to not eat the god Helios’s sheep and rams to avoid his wrath and the doom of a prophecy that results in Odysseus and his crew’s demise. However, after staying on the island for a while, they run out of food, and “down on [Odysseus’s] eyes they poured a sweet, sound sleep… as Eurylochus opened up his fatal plan to his friends” (12.364-365). Eurylochus convinces the rest of Odysseus’s crew to join him in eating Helios’s sheep and rams when the gods put Odysseus to sleep. The mutinous nature of his shipmates prove that it was not Odysseus’s fault that his crew invoked the wrath of Helios. It also demonstrates the lack of trust between Odysseus and his crew which a good leader would not have trouble with. When Helios discovers what Odysseus’s crew does, Zeus helps him punish them by “[hitting] the craft with a lightning-bolt and thunder…shipmates pitching out of her” (12.447-450). Additionally, this once again proves it was not Odysseus’s doing that ends up having his entire crew drown. However, Odysseus should have refused to stay on the island, knowing better that his crew would go against their word. Because of this, Odysseus’s crew triggered the gods’ anger, resulting in their calamity.
ReplyDeleteOdysseus was reckless and was a poor leader. Many times throughout the epic, Odysseus was the fault of his crewmates’ deaths. For example, when Odysseus arrived on Polyphemus’s island, he should have been more careful. But instead, he goes in and eats all the food in his cave without any thought of danger. He even thought that Polyphemus would provide further hospitality when he came back. Because of this recklessness, his comrades are literally eaten alive by the cyclops. When they finally escape, Odysseus shows even more recklessness by shouting “Cyclops- if any man on the face of the earth should ask you who blinded you, shames you so—Say Odysseus, Raider of cities, he gouged out your eyes…” (9.557-562) Because Odysseus said his name, birthplace, and his parents without thought of consequences, Polyphemus used his name and cursed Odysseus and his shipmates; praying to Poseidon that they would never make it back home. This of course caused many troubles to Odysseus. When he arrived on Circe’s Island (after the pig incident), Odysseus proved that he was a poor leader by staying behind for more than a year rather than voyaging home. This shows that he is incapable of staying on track. Lastly, also on Circe’s island, one Odysseus’s crew members fall and breaks his neck, but Odysseus never even noticed until he was in the Underworld and sees his ghost. Through all of these reasons, we can conclude that Odysseus was a poor and reckless leader, letting his crew mates die for his own rashness, and being irresponsible.
ReplyDeleteOdysseus is a wise, but careless leader that has a mutinous crew. Without Odysseus, his crew never would have escaped the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. Odysseus concocts a plan to serve Polyphemus wine until he passes out. While Polyphemus is sleeping Odysseus stabs his eye with an olive stake. Polyphemus awakens in great agony and starts yelling in pain. When his neighbor Cyclops hears this he asks Polyphemus what is the matter. However, Odysseus tell Polyphemus that his name is nobody, so Polyphemus replies to his neighbors by saying, “Nobody’s killing me now by fraud and not by force” (9.455). This shows that Odysseus is a wise and clever leader and helps his crew escape danger. However, once they escape the island Odysseus taunts the Cyclops and enrages him. As a result, Polyphemus throws a boulder at Odysseus and his crew, and they are almost brought to shore again. Odysseus then tells Polyphemus that his someone asks him who took his eye he should say, “Odysseus, /raider of cities, he gouged out your eye, / Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca” (9.560-562). Odysseus is a careless leader. He cares too much about his fame, then he does about the well-being of himself and his crew. He wants so badly to be known for taking Polyphemus’ eye, that he tells Polyphemus everything he needs to know to curse Odysseus. Later in the story they reach the island of Helios’ sheep, where Odysseus tells his crew to stop and rest. When they get on the island Odysseus makes his crew promise that “not one man among us- blind in his reckless ways-/ will slaughter an ox or ram” (12.325-326). Eurylochus, however convinces the crew to slaughter them, despite the demands of Odysseus. When Helios finds out they did this he asks Zeus to punish them and Zeus replies, “…I’ll hit their racing ship/ with a white-hot bolt, I’ll teat it into splinters” (12.418-419). Odysseus’ crew is not trusting of him and did not obey him, which shows that he did not have a strong relationship with his shipmates. Odysseus is clever, but he is careless and his lack of a relationship with his crew, causes his shipmates to be disloyal to him.
ReplyDeleteOdysseus is a poor leader who causes his own problems because of his reckless behavior. Throughout his journey back to Ithaca, he has been thoughtless on multiple accounts, which has not only endangered himself but has also endangered his crew of many ships full of men. One of the most notable times where Odysseus’ recklessness has threatened himself and his crew is the escape from the island of the Cyclops. As they are sailing away, Odysseus is overcome with a sudden urge to make sure that the Cyclops that had held him captive, Polyphemus, knew who he was. The great hero did this solely for the purpose of fame, even though his crew was against his actions. “So they begged but they could not bring my fighting spirit round. I called back with another burst of anger, ‘Cyclops / if any man on the face of the earth should ask you / who blinded you, shamed you so-say Odysseus, / the raider of cities, he gouged out your eye, / Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!’” (9.556-562). By having a devil-may-care attitude, Odysseus not only tells Polyphemus who he is, but provides him enough information for the Cyclops to accurately place a curse on him. “But at that he bellowed out to lord Poseidon, / thrusting his arms to the starry skies, and prayed, ‘Hear me- / Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth! / If I really am your son and you claim to be my father- / came, grant Odysseus, raider of cities, / Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca, / never reaches home…’” (9.584-590). Because Odysseus provided his information to the Cyclops in the previous excerpt, Polyphemus was able to effectively curse Odysseus because of Odysseus’ poor actions. In conclusion, Odysseus’ harebrained behavior endangered him and his crew more than once with one of the most prominent times being when Odysseus’ taunts the Cyclops Polyphemus which comes back to bite him when Polyphemus places a particular curse on the hero and his men. These actions contribute to Odysseus’ poor leadership because it shows while the crew yelled for their leader to stop taunting Polyphemus, he did not heed their words and proceeded to have the crew cursed by the Cyclops.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Odysseus is a not a good leader however he is not a bad leader either. Odysseus sometimes makes good decisions that keep the group out of danger. An example of this is when he covered his men’s ear’s with bee’s wax to prevent them from hearing the sirens. However other times Odysseus makes stupid choices that result in the death or injury of his men. Odysseus makes a lot of bad choices throughout the book such as telling Polyphemus his real name. However, Odysseus is not the only one who hurts Odysseus and his men on their travels. Odysseus’s men also make many mistakes. Poseidon is trying to get revenge on Odysseus for blinding Polyphemus. Poseidon does this by hurting Odysseus and his men on their travels. An example of this is when Odysseus and his remaining men are stranded on the island of Tirenacia in book twelve. In book eleven, Tiresias warns Odysseus to not to eat the cattle of the sun in Tirenacia. Tiresias says that if Odysseus or his men eat the Cattle of the Sun then Odysseus’s men will never make it back to Ithaca, and Odysseus’s journey to return to Ithaca will be much harder. Odysseus made a mistake by trusting his men to not eat the Cattle of the Sun. Odysseus’s men failed because they disobeyed Odysseus and ate the cattle despite Odysseus telling them not to because they were starving. The narrator states, “They’d prayed, slaughtered and skinned the cattle” (Homer 282). Eating the Cattle of the Sun angered the gods, and Poseidon created a storm. Poseidon also punished Odysseus by creating the storm that killed Odysseus’s remaining men and sent Odysseus to Calypso’s Island.
ReplyDeleteOdysseus is a good leader who set himself up for a more difficult journey. As described in book nine, Odysseus faced the monster of Poseidon, Polyphemus. Once defeating the monster, with the help of his somewhat loyal crew, he shows an act of arrogance which leads to perilous sailing struggles in the further years of his journey. Although, the curse of Poseidon was the only reason for his lengthy travel. Before the curse was formally set upon him, he faced many other adversities including the island of the Ciconies, the island of the Lotus Eaters, sailing through a hurricane, and the controversial topic of Odysseus staying at Calypso’s island for a long period of time. In these few examples of hardship, Odysseus only managed to only lose six crewmen per ship which is a small number compared to future events. In that case, it is really impressive to lose a small portion of his men through three different dangerous situations. After the defeat of the Cyclops, everything went downhill. The one tiny weakness to his leadership abilities was the one time he gloated after the defeat. Any other time in the book, Odysseus did not gloat unless his honorable name was being used as a joke or to shame himself. One example being when Broadsea insults Odysseus to try to get him to compete in the games in book eight. Declaring his name did bring him a lot of misfortune, but the way Odysseus handled the issues was in a matter that was very efficient for being created on the spot. Although most of the time he would lose a few members of his crew, but that was the faith the gods set for them. From stories told from Troy to the way that he is planning the downfall of the suitors in the current section of the reading. The things people say about him and the way he carries himself makes him a good leader. Sure he made a mistake of boasting once, but it should not reflect his whole leadership style.
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ReplyDeleteIn the epic of The Odyssey, Odysseus is somewhere in between having poor leadership skills and a mutinous crew. His men did not listen to him and were against him for most of his trip. They do not believe that he is a good leader so they try to take over the leadership which leads to a lot of problems. Odysseus himself does not think through his actions when he took his men to fight Polyphemus and was naïve enough to lead them into death because he did not know that even his magical wine would help. After he lost a lot of his people to Polyphemus, and when he was leaving, Odysseus screamed to Polyphemus about himself only to have fame and be remembered. Not only Odysseus was a mediocre leader, his crew was also very mutinous and did not listen to Odysseus. When they arrived at the island of Tirenacia, Odysseus was warned by a god not to eat the Cattle of the Sun because if he does, he will be punished by the god Hermes. he passes the warning on to his crew. They obey him for a while, but they get very hungry and decide that they would rather die from eating food than from starvation. Even though Odysseus warned his crew not to eat the sacred Cattle of the Sun, his crew disobeyed him and they “they’d prayed, slaughtered and skinned the cattle” (12, 282). Odysseus should have taken better care of his crew and thought before doing horrible mistakes.
In the Odyssey Odysseus was tasked with many hard tests of being a leader where even the smallest mistakes can be fatal, and to put that on one person’s shoulders is a bad thing. Odysseus would be classified as a decent leader. He is a good leader because when he was tasked with facing the witch when his men were turned in to pigs he crafted a way to help out his men. The last good point of Odysseus leader ship was when he said
ReplyDeleteBut swear me a binding oath, all here, that if
we come on a heard of cattle or fine floc of sheep,
not one man among us- blind in his reckless ways –
will slaughter an ox or ram. Just eat in peace,
content with the food immortal Circe have us. (280, 23-27)
However, the men did not heed his warning and ate the cattle of the sun and brought their own demise. Odysseus however is careless at times causing his men to be killed for example when he rushed in to the house of a Cyclops, and ate all of his cheese, and food. When this happened he knew the danger with messing with a Cyclops and he chose to not be as cautious.
I'll Follow You to Hell and Back -- Odysseus as a Leader
ReplyDeleteI believe that Odysseus is a good leader with a mutinous crew. Odysseus and his men did get into many problems on their venture back to Ithaca, but most of the problems are caused by Odysseus’ crew. for example, getting killed by Ciconians is the fault of the crew for not being able to defend themselves (Odysseus can’t fight all of their battles for them can he?), or when his crew disobeyed him on two different occasions! The first was eating lotus from the lotus eaters, and the second being when they killed the cattle of the sun after Odysseus specifically told them not to. Although these are all occasions in which his crew are screwing up, Polyphemus is a different story. It was originally Odysseus’ idea to go into the cave in which Polyphemus made his home, which was to put him to blame for the death of some of his crew. Some of what happened after Polyphemus also might have been the fault of Odysseus, having told Polyphemus his name, the cyclops puts a curse from his father (Posiedon) on him, causing the shipwreck that leads to his crew killing and eating the cattle of the sun. Other than this, Odysseus has pretty much done everything for his crew, even saving them from being swine for the rest of their lives ( fault of Calipso). In conclusion, odysseus is a pretty good leader aside from the fact that his unquenched thirst for fame might get in the way of a perfect venture.