Summary
Reluctantly, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians the sorry tale
of his wanderings. From Troy, the winds sweep him and his men to
Ismarus, city of the Cicones. The men plunder the land and, carried
away by greed, stay until the reinforced ranks of the Cicones turn
on them and attack. Odysseus and his crew finally escape, having
lost six men per ship. A storm sent by Zeus sweeps them along for
nine days before bringing them to the land of the Lotus-eaters,
where the natives give some of Odysseus’s men the intoxicating fruit
of the lotus. As soon as they eat this fruit, they lose all thoughts
of home and long for nothing more than to stay there eating more
fruit. Only by dragging his men back to the ship and locking them
up can Odysseus get them off the island.
Odysseus and his men then sail through the murky night
to the land of the Cyclopes, a rough and uncivilized race of one-eyed giants.
After making a meal of wild goats captured on an island offshore,
they cross to the mainland. There they immediately come upon a cave
full of sheep and crates of milk and cheese. The men advise Odysseus
to snatch some of the food and hurry off, but, to his and his crew’s
detriment, he decides to linger. The cave’s inhabitant soon returns—it
is the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon. Polyphemus makes
a show of hospitality at first, but he soon turns hostile. He devours
two of Odysseus’s men on the spot and imprisons Odysseus and the
rest in his cave for future meals.
Odysseus wants to take his sword to Polyphemus right then,
but he knows that only Polyphemus is strong enough to move the rock that
he has placed across the door of his cave. Odysseus thus devises and
executes a plan. The next day, while Polyphemus is outside pasturing
his sheep, Odysseus finds a wooden staff in the cave and hardens
it in the fire. When Polyphemus returns, Odysseus gets him drunk
on wine that he brought along from the ship. Feeling jovial, Polyphemus
asks Odysseus his name. Odysseus replies that his name is “Nobody”
(9.410).
As soon as Polyphemus collapses with intoxication, Odysseus and
a select group of his men drive the red-hot staff into his eye.
Polyphemus wakes with a shriek, and his neighbors come to see what
is wrong, but they leave as soon as he calls out, “Nobody’s killing
me” (9.455).
When morning comes, Odysseus and his men escape from the cave, unseen
by the blind Polyphemus, by clinging to the bellies of
the monster’s sheep as they go out to graze. Safe on board their
ships and with Polyphemus’s flock on board as well, Odysseus calls
to land and reveals his true identity. With his former prisoners
now out of reach, the blind giant lifts up a prayer to his father,
Poseidon, calling for vengeance on Odysseus.
Analysis
Books 9 through 12 are
told as flashbacks, as Odysseus sits in the palace of the Phaeacians
telling the story of his wanderings. These books thus give background
not only to Odysseus’s audience but to Homer’s as well. Providing
some of the richest and most celebrated examples of Odyssean cunning,
they speak as much to the resourcefulness of the poet, who uses
Odysseus’s voice to render a more complete picture of his hero’s
wanderings, as to that of the hero himself. 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. Once Homer establishes the
conflict between Odysseus and Polyphemus, he unveils Odysseus’s
escape plan slowly and subtly: the significance of Odysseus’s blinding
of Polyphemus becomes clear when Polyphemus lets his sheep out to
graze the next morning; similarly, Odysseus’s curious lie about
his name seems nonsense at first but adds a clever and humorous
twist to the necessity of keeping the other Cyclopes from rescuing
Polyphemus.
Odysseus’s eventual revelation of his identity
to Polyphemus ultimately proves foolish, and, because it embodies
a lack of foresight, stands in stark contrast to the cunning prudence
that Odysseus displays in his plan to escape from the cave. Though
his anger at Polyphemus for devouring his shipmates is certainly understandable,
and though Polyphemus’s blind rock-throwing fury eggs him on, Odysseus’s
taunts are unnecessary. By telling Polyphemus his name, Odysseus
pits his mortal indignation against Poseidon’s divine vengeance.
This act of hubris, or excessive pride, ensures almost automatically
that Odysseus will suffer grave consequences. Indeed, his eventual
punishment costs him dearly: Poseidon’s anger wipes away the very
thing that he gains by cleverly obscuring his name—the safety of
his men.
The form that Odysseus’s revelation of his
identity takes is interesting, as it represents the cultural values
of ancient Greece. Odysseus doesn’t simply utter his name; rather,
he attaches to it an epithet, or short, descriptive title (“raider
of cities”), his immediate paternal ancestry (“Laertes’s son”),
and a reference to his homeland (“who makes his home in Ithaca”)
(9.561–562). 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.
