Odysseus: The Overrated Leader

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In the epic poem ‘The Odyssey’, by Homer, Odysseus, the narrator and captain of a crew goes through many obstacles as he tries to lead his crew back to their homeland, Ithaca, after ten years of battling the Trojan War. Odysseus was the king of Ithaca and seen as a great leader. Good leaders are those who can lead and direct without misusing their power and also protect their crew. Although Odysseus has the characteristics of a good leader sometimes, I don’t think that he is one as a whole mainly because he can’t control his men, lacks the gain of respect and trust from his crew, and gets carried away with his pride.
One of the first things that happen is when the crew went to the land of the Cicones and they raided them, taking their valuables, raping the women, and killing all the men. They could’ve avoided the tragedy if they left earlier but the crew decided to stay and enjoy all the food, wine, and all the other things Cicones had to offer. At several points, Odysseus tried to get the crew to go back to the ship and leave, “‘Back, and quickly! Out to sea again!’ My men were mutinous, fools” (146), but he blames his crew’s behavior when really he couldn’t be a good leader and control them. Soon his bad leadership affects them all when the Cicones backup army comes and, “Six benches were left empty in every ship” (147). This shows Odysseus’ lack of control over his men and also makes us question his judgement as a narrator since he is blaming his men for this.
There were multiple times when it was evident that Odysseus’ crew did not trust or respect him. One of them is in book ten when Aeolus, ruler of the winds, gave Odysseus the bag of westerly winds to guide them home, the crew thought it was a fortune full of gold and s...

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...e many good decisions as a leader, but his bad decisions overweight his good ones. Before reading this story, and analyzing what it meant to be a good leader, I thought that a leader was just a person who was the boss of everything but it is very far from just that. Homer does a very good job at making the readers think about what a leader is and realizing that it is more than just a title. At first glance I thought Odysseus was a great leader, but after looking at the big picture, I realised that almost everything was Odysseus’ fault. No matter how much he did to try and make up for what happened or fix it, in the end he didn’t do his only job which was to get his crew back to Ithaca. Odysseus’ lack of control, respect and trust, and self control are major factors that if he fixed, could result in being a great leader, but that wouldn’t make ‘The Odyssey’ very epic.

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