Odysseus, the main character from “The Odyssey” , began his story ruling the island kingdom Ithaca; the credit for writing this story is given to Homer, a blind poet. The poem was broken up into 24 books, the first known english translation was written in 566 BCE. The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most important works of literature in western culture. This series of books is a story of a man who goes through many ups and downs going from ruling to being held captive, he uses more intelligence than strength while facing his many obstacles on his journey back to his kingdom Ithaca.
The genre of the “Odyssey” would be considered poetry even though it is a decently long read only because the man who is credited for writing the series of books is a poet. Though I would consider it myself a series of novels because of the length of the books. The characters that play some of the biggest roles in this poem would be Odysseus, Calypso, and Polyphemus. Odysseus obviously is the main protagonist and is the character that the story is following align on his journey back to Ithaca.
Calypso is his captor, she is a goddess and has held him captive for seven years on an island, but she falls deeply in love with him over those seven years which gets her to allow him to escape. She helps him build a raft which is what he would try to use to escape. Poseidon finds this out and destroys his raft, but a sea nymph helps him swim to shore. The next character we meet in Polyphemus who is a cyclops, after entering his cve Odysseus’s men find all the meat and cheese that they desire. Eventually Polyphemus returns to his cave and blocks of the cave entrance with a large bolder to eat the men, but Odysseus comes up with a plan, he gets Polyphemus drunk with wine and blinds him with a stake, him and his men then escape.
The blindness of Polyphemus symbolizes him not being able to see Odysseus’s real name after he told him his name was “nobody”. His blindness to the fact the Odyssues would even try to injure or kill him. His blindness to seeing the men escape beneath his rams going out of the cave, and his blindness to see that a small and miniscule appearing man might be the very man of prophecy who was sent about his blindness.
Some interesting facts about Homer, the man credited for first writing the series of poems, is that he actually first wrote the Iliad which was just a short poem based on the same story. The poems were actually written in what is called “Epic Greek” a language that shows a mix of different latin dialects. I would definitely recommend this poem as it is very action packed even though it was written so long ago, and it also gives you a good look at what Greek Mythology.
