summary of book ix:
Odysseus reveals his name and homeland to Alcinous, and says that Calypso held him against his will before his arrival. he traces his route after troy. After his crew sacked Ismaros, a Kikone coastal town, they fought the Kikone army. they lost many men when their twelve ships sailed and suffered a great storm the following days at sea. On their tenth day, they arrive at the Island of the Lotus Eaters, a peaceful village that eats the sweet, pleasure-producing plant, the lotus. Three of Odysseus’ men eat the lotus and wish to remain there, but Odysseus forces them back into the ship and sets sail again.
Then they arrive in the land of the Cyclopes, a race of lawless, hermit, one-eyed giants. The next day, Odysseus’s men feast on the bountiful goats on the deserted and fertile island off the Cyclopes’ mainland. The next day, Odysseus and his crew cross to the mainland to meet the Cyclopes. They see a huge, brutish man in a field, and Odysseus brings a goatskin filled with sweet liquor as a gift. They arrive at his cave – he is still in the grass – and Odysseus’s men want to steal his cheeses and cattle. Odysseus refuses, wanting to meet the owner. They wait for him, then hide when he comes in and does his homework for him.
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the cyclops, called polyphemus, notices them and asks who they are, and odysseus introduces himself and asks for any help he can give him, warning him not to offend zeus, the god of hospitality. Polyphemus ridicules this idea; he doesn’t care about the gods. Instead, he asks where Odysseus’ ship is; the cunning leader lies and says he’s gone broke and they’re the only survivors. Polyphemus grabs two of Odysseus’ men, beats them to death and eats them whole while the other men watch, helpless. Polyphemus then goes to sleep on his doorstep, preventing Odysseus from killing him, as they wouldn’t be able to move the huge corpse away from him to escape.
In the morning, Polyphemus eats a few more men, then leaves and blocks the cave entrance with a large stone. Odysseus hatches a plan to defeat Polyphemus. he cuts off a six-foot section of Polyphemus’s great club, then cuts it to make a sharp, pointed end, and finally holds it in the fire to harden it. at night, polyphemus returns and eats two more men. Odysseus offers her some of his wine; Polyphemus asks for more and names her after him, promising her a gift. odysseus says that his name is “no one”, and polyphemus says that his gift will eat him next. but polyphemus falls asleep, drunk, and odysseus and four men reheat the point of it in the fire and stick it in polyphemus’s eye. he is blinded and howls for his fellow Cyclopes, who come out of their cave and ask him if a man has deceived him. “no one,” says polyphemus, has ruined it. the other Cyclopes think he means “no one” has ruined him, and leave him, telling him to pray to his father, Poseidon.
Polyphemus opens the cave door in hopes of trapping anyone who tries to escape. Odysseus has another idea. he ties the rams in the cave together and creates a sling under each ram that the men can ride on. they stay in their ram carriages until morning, when Polyphemus lets the rams through the gate. Odysseus’ ram, the leader, goes last, and Polyphemus questions why he is not in his usual leadership position. once they are free, the men drop their slings and lead the rams to their ship. Safe at sea again, Odysseus yells insults at Polyphemus. polyphemus breaks off a hilltop and throws it near the ship, knocking it off balance with a tidal wave. Despite his crew’s pleas not to reveal his position by mocking Polyphemus again, Odysseus gives the Cyclops the name and homeland of the man who blinded him. Polyphemus says that he was once given a prophecy that someone named Odysseus, presumably a giant, would blind him; now he asks odysseus to come back, since he will treat him well and pray for him to his father, poseidon.
Odysseus rejects his offer and Polyphemus prays to Poseidon that Odysseus will lose his companions and never return home. Immediately, Poseidon throws a huge stone that nearly hits the ship. The crew rushes to meet their waiting fleet, and the men make a sacrificial offering of the rams to Zeus. however, zeus has in mind the destruction and death of involuntary men. they will celebrate that day and the next morning they will continue their journey home.
analysis:
about halfway through the story, we get the full “backstory” (the backstory) as to why poseidon holds a grudge against odysseus. but the polyphemus episode is important beyond serving as a plot point; We learn a lot about Odysseus as a leader, both his strengths and his flaws.
as we saw in book viii, in which odysseus reacted angrily to an athletic challenge, he is prone to rash decisions. First, he makes the mistake of wanting to meet Polyphemus even when his men warn him not to. We can attribute this action to Odysseus’ faith in the good will of men (and even of the Cyclopes). but he makes a much more egregious mistake when he taunts Polyphemus not once but twice. This second mistake is what creates his problem with Poseidon, as he foolishly reveals his name and invites the wrath of the earthquake god, subsequently dooming his shipmates.
But for every misjudgment on his part, Odysseus devises an equally ingenious plan to escape trouble. Prior to the Polyphemus episode, he wisely steers his Earth crew away from the drug-addled, hedonistic lotus eaters, knowing that succumbing to temptation there will prevent them from enjoying the truer pleasures of home. with Polyphemus, he comes up with three brilliant ideas: create a nail to blind Polyphemus in his only vulnerable spot; calling himself “nohbdy” so the other cyclops won’t know who blinded polyphemus; and slinging under the rams to escape. In each case, a man with less tactical ability would have opted for the simpler solution (kill Polyphemus when he slept by the door; reveal his name immediately from him; try to escape from Polyphemus) with destructive consequences. /p>
Homer’s account of the blinding of Polyphemus is striking in its descriptive and poetic power. the images are vivid and specific: “we pierced that great eye socket / while blood ran around the red-hot rod. / the eyelid and whip were singed; the pierced ball / hissed hot, and the roots snapped” ( 420-423). Keep in mind that this entire chapter is in Odysseus’ narrative voice as he tells his story to Alcinous, and it’s the most we’ve heard him speak so far. He (and Homer, of course) uses various occupational similes when describing the blinding: “I leaned on it / turned it like a carpenter turns a drill / on boards, having men below to swing / the two-handed strap” (416- 419) and “in a smithy / one sees a red-hot ax head or adze / immersed and crushed in a cold vat, steam sizzling / just enough for the eyeball to hiss around the point” (425-427, 429 ). both similes remind us of the almost mechanical work men do (create a weapon, harden it by fire, and blind Polyphemus) and the collaborative effort required to accomplish such a task: just together, like a virtual carpenter and his workers. . , they will be able to defeat the mighty Cyclops.
book x summary:
Odysseus continues his story for Alcinous. After meeting Polyphemus, Odysseus and his crew arrive on the island of the wind god Aiolos. Aiolos houses them for a month, then provides Odysseus with a bag containing storm winds to help them navigate. they sail with their west wind at their backs, and after ten days they sight Ithaca. But while Odysseus sleeps, his crew, mistakenly believing the bag of aiolos to be full of silver and gold, greedily open it. all the winds go out and the ship blows off course in a hurricane.
they are sent back to aiolos island and odysseus explains what happened. Aiolos believes that Odysseus’ journey is cursed by the gods and refuses to help him further. Odysseus and his crew sail without wind and reach Alamos, land of the Laistrygonian giants. The King, Antiphates, and Queen eat one of Odysseus’s envoys, and the crew barely escapes as the other Laistrygonians fire rocks at the retreating ship.
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The men arrive at the island of the goddess Circe. Odysseus kills a deer and raises the morale of his crew with a great feast. he tells his crew that he saw smoke rising from the woods, but his men, remembering their past encounters with strangers, are afraid to meet new ones. But Odysseus, after a random selection, sends half of the Weeping Men under Eurylokhos to investigate.
outside circe’s house lie subdued and spellbound wolves and cougars. inside, circe sings as she weaves at her loom. all the men except eurylokhos, who suspects a deception, are reassured by this kind behavior and enter. Circe prepares a feast for them and adds something to her drinks; once they drink it, they turn into pigs. she locks them in a pigsty while eurylokhos runs back to alert the crew.
odysseus goes home alone despite euriloco’s protests. The god Hermes stops him in his tracks and gives him a plant that will preserve him against Circe’s own swine poison. Odysseus should then threaten her with death, at which point Circe will offer to sleep with him. Ulysses must accept, as he will break the spell he has on his crew.
Odysseus visits Circe and the plant works its magic against his poison. she goes ahead with hermes plan, and because of her strength she takes him for the great odysseus. As Hermes predicted, she asks him to sleep with her; she first makes him promise that she won’t use any more enchantments. They retire to his opulent bedroom, but Odysseus is worried about his companions. Circe turns them back into men, now looking better than ever. She tells Odysseus to have her men bring their ships and equipment ashore and return with everyone. he does, and they all return except the still-suspicious eurylokhos.
Circe’s maids bathe the men and give them dinner. Circe invites Odysseus to stay with her on her island. The men end up staying for a year in paradise until they finally remind Odysseus of his mission. Odysseus asks Circe to help them return home, but she tells him that he must go to Hades, the land of the dead, and speak with the blind seer Tiresias. She gives the despondent Odysseus detailed instructions for navigating to Hades and preparing rites to summon Tiresias. Odysseus tells his crew that it’s time to go, but the youngest, Elpenor, having drunkenly slept on the roof, falls and commits suicide.
analysis:
Temptation strikes men three times in this book. First, the crew eagerly open the bag of the winds, even treacherously suspecting that Odysseus is hiding his treasure from them. then the men recklessly accept circe’s hospitality and drinks. Finally, everyone, especially Odysseus, spends a year basking in the luxury of Circe’s domain, with thoughts of home far from their minds. Indeed, despite his usual no-nonsense decision-making, Odysseus’s great character flaw is his occasional rash and emotional behavior: note his reckless mockery of Polyphemus in Book IX, or, as Eurylokhos points out, his choice simply to watch to polyphemus.
circe, in a way, is a double of the goddess calypso. while Calypso criticized gender double standards among the gods, arguing against the injustice of a system in which male gods can take mortal lovers as they please while goddesses cannot – and by extension, it seems, Applying this critique to Greek society, Circe turns the tables on the usual male/female power dynamic. she exploits the weakness and despair of men, turning them into the pigs she probably thinks they resemble in behavior.
Interestingly, Circe is paired for the first time with another woman in the poem: Penelope. She is first shown weaving at her loom, the activity that Penelope uses to drive suitors away from her. Since Circe is another of the poem’s examples of a woman symbolically castrating, and since Penelope has raised some doubts about the sincerity of her fidelity, more parallels are drawn with Penelope emerging as the lesser woman. Penelope also has a family of men who have turned her house into a pigsty, but she isn’t strong enough to scare them away like Circe can.
Perhaps it is Circe’s strength, not to mention her divine beauty, that draws Odysseus. As with Calypso, he doesn’t seem to have any qualms about committing an act of infidelity with her. instead of thinking guiltily about his wife at home, he worries about the well-being of her shipmates.
summary of book xi:
Odysseus and his crew sail to the land of the Winter Men and, following Circe’s instructions, perform a ritual sacrifice for Tiresias. While he waits for Tiresias, Odysseus knocks down the other ghosts that emerge, including El Penor, who had fallen from Circe’s roof. Odysseus promises him a burial worthy of a sailor on the island of Circe. he also sees his dead mother, antikleia. Tiresias finally appears and warns him that Poseidon seeks revenge for the blinding of his son, Polyphemus. He warns Odysseus not to touch the flocks of Helios when he lands on Thrinakia, predicting the doom of his crew if they do. Furthermore, he predicts that Odysseus will come to his house alone and kill Penelope’s destructive suitors. then he will take an oar to a place where men do not know the sea, and when asked about the “fan” on his shoulder, he must make a sacrifice to Poseidon; the sacrifice will ensure a rich life from then on.
tiresias leaves, and ulysses allows antikleia to sip the blood he has prepared and thus speak. he briefly tells her about the purpose of her trip, then asks what killed her, then asks about the rest of her family. She recounts the life of Penelope and Telemachus, and says that her father stays at home, pining for the return of her son. she was like that too, and her loneliness and her longing for her odysseus is what killed her. Ulysses tries to hug her, but her hands go through the air. After they finish talking, more shadows come and tell Odysseus her stories.
Odysseus stops his story. The Phaeacian king, Alcinous, asks him to spend another day with them so they can provide him with gifts, then asks if he knew any of his fellow warriors in the shadows. Odysseus recounts how he saw Agamemnon, who tells him how Aigisthos and his wife Klytaimnestra killed him, and warns him about the wickedness of women; he must return home secretly, without telling his wife. Ulysses talks with other shadows, including Achilles, whose son, Neoptolemos, he talks to him about. he sees tantolos, tortured by food and drink always out of his reach, and sisyphus, perpetually pushing a rock up a hill. The shadows pile up by the thousands and frighten Odysseus, who goes to sea with his crew.
analysis:
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It is appropriate that the cause of the death of Odysseus’s mother is loneliness and longing, the central emotions in a poem about the relentless search for a home and the consequent isolation. this book also sheds light on four other defining themes in the poem: fidelity, reverence for the gods, temptation, and resistance.
We finally hear directly from Agamemnon after hearing his story so many times through other narratives. The story of his death at the hands of his wife and her lover has continually reinforced Odysseus’ parallel story, and Agamemnon explicitly explains the story’s underlying message: “the day of faithful wives is gone forever” (535 ).
Odysseus is also reminded not to touch the oxen of Helios and to make a sacrifice to Poseidon once he is safely ensconced in Ithaca; in other words, that he pay his due respects to the gods. The temptation to raid the oxen will prove too great for his crew, and the temptation is, in fact, the continual blind spot of both Odysseus and his sailors. the punishment of tantolos personifies temptation; his temptation is all the worse as it can never be satisfied.
Sisyphus also recalls an important and also unrewarding character trait for Odysseus: persistence. Always pushing a heavy stone up a hill, Sisyphus trudges along much like Odysseus on his seemingly endless journey home.
summary of book xii:
Odysseus and his crew sail back to the island of Circe, where they build a funeral pyre for Elpenor. Circe gives them a feast, and at night warns Odysseus of the dangers his ship will face tomorrow. the next day, the crew follows their instructions by covering their ears so that the song of the sirens does not divert them from their course; Odysseus listens to him, but his men tie him to the mast. next, the men must navigate between scylla, a six-headed sea monster that devours sailors, and the treacherous whirlpools of charybdis. Odysseus does not tell them about impending death, as they would panic. in fact, he scylla captures and eats six men.
The crew passes through the dangers and reaches the island of Helios, the sun. Ulysses conveys Tiresias and Circe’s advice not to eat the oxen or land on the island. Tired and hungry, they want to sleep on the island, but Odysseus makes them promise not to touch the oxen. they tie up, eat and mourn their dead companions.
Winds prevent them from leaving for a month, and their food supply dwindles. while odysseus prays to the gods in isolation one day, eurylokhos incites the others to sacrifice the oxen. Odysseus returns and sees what has happened, and quickly Lord Helios asks Zeus to punish them. after the crew partied for six days, they set sail. Zeus raises a storm as punishment and fires a bolt of lightning at the ship, destroying it. The men fall into the water and Odysseus grabs onto the floating parts of the ship. he drifts back to charybdis, from which he barely escapes. With protection from above, he shrieks for Scylla and drifts to Calypso’s Island. Odysseus reminds the audience of him that he has already told them this.
analysis:
temptation once again occupies a central place in this book. Ulysses’ crew falls victim to temptation, sacrificing and feasting with Helios’s oxen, earning the wrath of the gods in return.
the song of the sirens also tempts odysseus. however, by tying himself to the mast, he exercises self-control when he knows he wouldn’t otherwise have it. in this sense, he indulges in a tempting fantasy: he can enjoy the beauty of the sirens’ song without any attendant punishment. This mark of unscathed temptation is similar to her infidelities, in that she is able to sleep with other women under the guise of needing her mission.
The opposite of temptation, one could argue, is fear; Instead of looking forward to tantalizingly melting into guilty pleasures, the fearful person has anxiety about future punishments. Odysseus wisely withholds information about Scylla from his crew, who have proven vulnerable to both temptation and fear. if he had told them about scylla, they might have panicked and lost more than six men.
However, Odysseus is far from ruthless, and mourns the deaths of the men along with his fellow survivors. his crew has slowly been losing men here and there (and eventually all but odysseus at the end of this book) and a certain indifference to death seems to have built up, but odysseus is referring to the sight of scylla devouring his men as “by far the worst I’ve ever suffered” (334).
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