How does polyphemus treat odysseus

Feeling jovial, Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name. As soon as Polyphemus collapses with intoxication, Odysseus and a select group of his men drive the red-hot staff into his eye.

With his former prisoners now out of reach, the blind giant lifts up a prayer to his father, Poseidon, calling for vengeance on Odysseus. Books 9 through 12 are told as flashbacks, as Odysseus sits in the palace of the Phaeacians telling the story of his wanderings. The foreboding that Odysseus feels as he heads toward the cave, which seems to prompt him to take the wine along, foreshadows his upcoming encounter with Polyphemus and the need for trickery to prevail.

This act of hubris, or excessive pride, ensures almost automatically that Odysseus will suffer grave consequences. This manner of introduction was very formalized and formulaic in Homeric Greece and should seem familiar to readers of The Iliad. Odysseus is here going through the motions of confirming his kleos the glory or renown that one earns in the eyes of others by performing great deeds.

He wants to make sure that people know that he was the one who blinded Polyphemus, explicitly instructing Polyphemus to make others aware of his act. Like the heroes of The Iliad , Odysseus believes that the height of glory is achieved by spreading his name abroad through great deeds. For all of his stupidity and brutishness, Polyphemus strikes some commentators as vaguely sympathetic at the end of Book 9. They point to the pitiful prayer that he offers to his father, Poseidon, and his warm treatment of his beloved sheep, who are soon to be devoured by Odysseus and his men.

He caresses each wooly back as it passes out of his cave, and it is difficult not to pity him when he gives special attention to his faithful lead ram. Though Homeric culture praised Odysseus for his characteristic cunning, others have criticized him for this quality, perceiving his tactics as conniving, underhanded, dishonest, and even cowardly. Dante, for example, in the Inferno, relegates Odysseus to the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell—the realm reserved for those guilty of Spiritual Theft—because of his treachery in the Trojan horse episode that enabled him to slaughter the unwitting Trojans.

Ace your assignments with our guide to The Odyssey! SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. He yells once, taunting him, and the Cyclops hurls a huge chunk of a mountain out at the ship. He misses, throwing it beyond the ship and driving it back to the shore. No more. But Odysseus has given the Cyclops enough information to call down upon him and his men a curse; that is exactly what he does. He asks his father Poseidon to destroy Odysseus and his ships, or at least make sure that Odysseus, if he makes it home, gets there all alone and finds trouble awaiting him there.

Thus, in this final taunting of the Cyclops, we see that Odysseus is unable to distance himself completely from the values dear to the Iliadic heroes; he feels the need to identify himself to the Cyclops, so others will know of his skill and cunning.

Learn more about how memories of the Mycenaean era were preserved in oral stories of gods and heroes. Therefore he blinds it , rendering it disabled but capable of letting them out. Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name is Nobody as he knows that when he attacks, the Cyclops will cry out and be asked by other Cyclopes if it needs help. By telling the Cyclops his real name, Odysseus opened himself up to the curse Polyphemus places upon him as Poseidon is his father and they are at sea.

By David J. What lessons can we take away from his journeys? What a mistake. Cyclopean Ideas of Hospitality Polyphemus is a Cyclops who has one round eye in the middle of his forehead.

It is during this episode that Odysseus' judgment comes into question. Having feasted on goat meat on an offshore island, Odysseus and his men could move on. However, Odysseus is curious about who lives on the mainland. Taking a dozen of his best men, as well as a skin of extremely strong wine that he received from a priest of Apollo, Odysseus sets out to investigate a cavern near the mainland shore.

It is the lair of Polyphemus, a Cyclops. Discovering abundant food in the cave, the men want to raid it and sail off, but Odysseus insists on staying to try the hospitality of the owner, who proves to be no charming host. Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon and nearly as powerful as the gods himself, scoffs at the concept of hospitality and welcomes his guests by devouring two for supper and trapping the rest inside his cave for later meals.

When the Cyclops leaves, Odysseus devises a plan. From an olivewood that the giant uses as a club, the Greeks fashion a pointed lance about a fathom six feet long and char the point to hardness. When Cyclops returns that night, he downs two more men for supper, and Odysseus offers him the skin's contents. The arrogant giant swills down three large bowls full.

As he is drinking, the Cyclops demands to know Odysseus' name. The wily hero says that it is "Nobody" outis in the Greek. When the giant passes out, the Greeks immediately seize their opportunity and grind the lance into the Cyclops' single eye, blinding him. The monster screams with pain and cries for help, but when other Cyclops arrive outside and ask who is harming him, Polyphemus can only answer, " Nobody,.

Nobody's killing me now by fraud and not by force! The next morning, when Polyphemus, blind, lets his rams out in the morning, Odysseus and his men ride out with them, tucked under their bellies and using the animals as shields.

As Odysseus and his men sail away, however, Odysseus again employs questionable judgment, shouting taunts at the wounded monster. Using the Greek's voice to direct his aim, Polyphemus hurls giant boulders after the ship, barely missing. Then Odysseus assures that his trials will continue by boasting to Polyphemus that it was he, Odysseus of Ithaca, not a "Nobody," who gouged out the giant's eye.

In this instance, Odysseus is not simply showing pride in his good name, but foolish arrogance that allows the monster to identify him. Polyphemus then calls on his father, Poseidon, god of the sea, to avenge him. In a curse repeated by Tiresias as a prophecy Or, if the Fates have already determined that he must, then may he arrive late, broken, and alone, finding great troubles in his household 9. With nothing but oceans between him and Ithaca and the god of the sea as his new enemy, Odysseus has paid a hefty price for his pride.