There are three main groups of characters in the section of the Odyssey known as the Cyclopeia. The first group is the Cyclopes, the second Odysseus, and the third Odysseus's sailors.
The Cyclopes are a group of giants with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads. Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon, is the most monstrous of the lot, shunning the company of his fellow monsters and living alone. He enjoys the taste of human flesh and has little sympathy for human beings, although he does treat his flock of sheep well. His behavior, in trapping the sailors in a cave by rolling a rock in the entrance, violates the Greek norms of hospitality.
Odysseus is portrayed as more clever and level-headed than his sailors, who mainly serve as foils to their leader, and creates the plan to get Polyphemus drunk and blind him while he is passed out. That and the subsequent scheme to escape clinging to the bellies of the rams shows Odysseus's ability to plan well. His boasting and telling Polyphemus his real name, though, shows Odysseus's ego can at times override his sense of self-preservation.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
How do the characters of the Odyssey act in the Cyclopeia?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
No comments:
Post a Comment