The Odyssey

11 Pages 2705 Words

- that of a
shrewd and unscrupulous man who lives by his wits. At the same time, Homer softened
this character and made him more humane by stressing the theme *PROFESSIONAL
RESEARCH 1998 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
of his love for wife, but despite admirable traits which Homer ascribes to Odysseus, there
are presence all the same the traces of a cruder Odysseus who sacks cities by the
enjoyment it brings him and can who can never resist telling a lie if he can get away with
it.
Charles H. Taylor, Jr., writes of Odysseus that “he is basically a fixed personality,
equipped from the beginning to manage almost any situation in which he finds himself.”
(Taylor, p. 569) At this point, I should like to state that it should be kept in mind that the
structure of “The Odyssey” has been divided into three parts. Some of these parts do have
more relevance to the nature of this subject as I am focusing it than other do, albeit most
scholars believe that “The Odyssey” is a compendium of three different myths, sagas, or
legends in one long epic by someone named Homer. In the very first line of “The
Odyssey,” Odysseus is described as “the man of many ways.” Lying is clearing one of
these many ways, and in the course of “The Odyssey,” Odysseus takes on many identities.
According to W. F. Jackson Knight in this regard:
When Odysseus reached Ithaca, and was met by Athena, he began to
relate a fictious account of himself, how he was a refugee from Clete. This
might well have turned out to be an old saga, originally about someone else,
if Athena had not stopped Odysseus short by declaring herself. But he
succeeded in a Cleteon story to the pigman Eumaeus; how he was Cleteon
who had fought at Troy, and afterwards had been captured attempting a raid
on Egypt; how he had managed to escape from Phoenicians, and after a
shipwreck had made another escape, and found his way to Ithaca instead of
the ...