The Wisdom of Odysseus Essay

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Wisdom of Odysseus In The Odyssey, by Homer, Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, and the husband of Penelopeia, who had a son, named Telemachos. Odysseus leaves his newborn baby because he has to go to war. After the war he would leave not knowing that he burned Poseidon’s temple, and Poseidon gets mad and makes Odysseus take forever to go back home which was ten more years. Throughout the journey going back home, he would be wise around situations. Other times he would not think about the problem thoroughly which would cause mistakes for him. Odysseus may be wise at some point, but also makes mistakes. Noman gets the Cyclops drunk and falls asleep. Then he gets his spear and stabs him in the eye, and the Cyclops calls for help but no one helps him because Noman is hurting him.“If no man is using force, and you are alone, there’s no help for a bit of sickness…”(115). This is wise because instead of Odysseus giving his real name he gave the Cyclops a fake name which is Noman or nobody. So when Odysseus attacked him he would say that nobody is killing him making his friends not help him, so it would be easy for all of them to escape. Odysseus goes inside his house as a beggar and saw all of the suitors. Later on another beggar comes telling him to leave because this is his place and not his. To determine whose place it is they start a fight to see who wins, and Odysseus is deciding if he should kill the other beggar or just hurt him. “Odysseus considered whether he should hit hard enough to kill on the spot, or give him a gentle tap and down him”(227). If Odysseus killed the beggar it would be a really bad mistake, so instead he hurt him making this a wise decision. In the other hand if he killed him he would be found out because it would show that he is really strong and not weak. That would reveal that he is Odysseus and then all of the suitors would then try to kill him. Since he did a soft hit he could still be disguised as the beggar and check who he should kill and who he shouldn’t kill. After they left the lotus eaters and arrived on a new island. They found a cave to which they didn’t know who it belong to so they decided to stay there and wait for the owners cave, to find out that the owner was a horrible monster. “But I would not listen-indeed it would have been much better if I had!... As it turned out, he was destined to be anything but a vision of joy to my comrades”(110). This was a really bad mistake because they stayed in the cave to find out who lived there. Then they found out that it belong to horrible monster known as Cyclops. He even insisted that they shouldn’t have stayed but he decided to listen to his comrades this time. This was bad because some of his comrades also died because of the Cyclops. Circe told Odysseus not arm himself as