Odyssey 10-12
Burke, Brady, and Ryan
Summary
They go for the land of the Cyclops to the Aeolus and he is the ruler of all winds. Odysseus goes and get a bag of wind for him and doesn’t tell his men. When they are almost home Odysseus falls asleep because he didn’t trust his men. When he is asleep his ship men thought that it was loot like gold and silver but it was wind and it blew them all off track and back to Aeolia this time Aeolus doesn’t help them. They then go to the River of Oceans as Cerce told them to do so to fight Cila. When they get there they have to choose to go fight Cila or another monster. If he fights Cila he will lose 8 men, if he fights the other monster he could lose it all or get by without losing anything. Odysseus spends one more night with Circe and then he sets sail. When he is on his way home they have to pass the Sirens and when they pass them he has to plug their ears with beeswax because the Siren’s music is really seductive.
Themes
Hospitality- Always feed your guest and treat them right. No matter is its a complete stranger or a friend you would treat them the same.
Loyalty- The biggest example of loyalty is Penelope and her being able to be loyal enough to not remarry and get with other suitors. Another example is Telemachus who stands by his father against the suitors.
Leadership- Odysseus tells his teams about the risk ahead, and the options that they will have to face. One involves a dragon with 6 heads and one involves a huge sunk hole.
Courage- Odysseus has a lot of courage to face the challenge of either losing 6 men of losing the whole ship.
Quotes
“We Achaeans coming from Troy, beaten off our true course by winds from every direction across the great gulf of the open sea, making for home, by the wrong way, on the wrong courses. So we have come. So it has pleased Zeus to arrange it.”
“Next I told the rest of the men to cast lots, to find out which of them must endure with me to take up the great beam and spin it in the Cyclops' eye when sweet sleep had come over him. The ones drew it whom I myself would have wanted chosen, four men, and I myself was the fifth, and allotted with them.”
“Cyclops, in the end it was no weak man’s companions you were to eat by violence and force in your hollow cave, and your evil deeds were to catch up with you, and be too strong for you, hard one, who dared to eat your own guests in your own house, so Zeus and the rest of the gods have punished you.”
“So they spoke, but could not persuade the great heart in me, but once again in the anger of my heart I cried to him: "Cyclops, if any mortal man ever asks you who it was that inflicted upon your eye this shameful blinding, tell him that you were blinded by Odysseus, sacker of cities. Laertes is his father, and he makes his home on Ithaka."