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What Are The Obstacles In The Odyssey

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As the Odyssey begins, the hero, Odysseus, sets forth onto his journey to the Trojan War at Troy from his home island Ithaca. Once on his journey, Odysseus conquers many obstacles with his men but always gives no thanks to the gods that helped him overcome those feats. Even after he and his men won the Trojan War, he exclaims that he, Odysseus, was the greatest warrior that ever lived and had no help from Poseidon (who killed the messenger who was going to expose the Trojan Horse). This untrue statement upset Poseidon and overall influenced him to make Odysseus and his men's journey much more difficult. Many of these self-inflicted incidents were important, but I believe that the incidents of Polyphemus, Scylla, and the sirens took the …show more content…
As they wandered around the island, they made their way into an abnormally large cave to shelter them. Eventually, when Odysseus and his men started to settle down in the cave, they heard a boulder move and a ginormous Cyclops appeared out of the light. His name was Polyphemus and he was one of Poseidon’s many sons. He surprisingly had good hospitality towards Odysseus and his crew who had just trespassed into his house. This would change though when Polyphemus started to eat some of Odysseus’ men out of nowhere. In that very moment, Odysseus thought of a plan which was to give the Cyclops an overload of wine to put him into a deep sleep. Then, when Polyphemus was in a deep sleep, Odysseus stabbed a fiery stake into his eye to blind him. After defeating the Cyclops, Odysseus screamed “ Cyclops, 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! “ (Homer, 996) Even though Odysseus’ pride wasn’t cut at all with his triumph, Poseidon was informed about the killing of his son which would eventually find it’s way back to Odysseus in a horrific way. This incident would affect Odysseus on his way home to Ithaca because Poseidon would try and kill him to teach him the great quality of

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