Examples Of Monsters In The Odyssey

Homer’s The Odyssey chronicles Odysseus’s return home from the Trojan War to reunite with his wife, kingdom, and son. However, Odysseus has been encountering serious difficulties that have prevented him from reaching home for nearly twenty years. These difficulties include various different types of monsters, each of which seems to embody undesirable traits such as laziness or savagery. The Greeks portray creatures with these traits as monsters as an example of the Greeks’ “better” traits and subsequent superiority. Each species of monster within The Odyssey represents one or more qualities that the Greeks have demonized in comparison to themselves.

The one-eyed Cyclops present a monster with extremely barbaric qualities that the Greeks abhor.

They live by themselves and for themselves, and do not abide by any rules or government. Bestial and independent, the Cyclops are the opposite of what the Greeks pride themselves on. The Greeks see themselves as civilized, orderly human beings, more evolved than lawless animals like the Cyclops. They find the Cyclops to be inferior, as Cyclops’ society is far less organized than the Greeks’, and the Cyclops do not depend on the rest of their species like the Greeks do. The Cyclops are also far less sophisticated than the Greeks. When a Cyclops attacks two of Odysseus’s men, the “ruthless brute” snatches them up and “[knocks] them dead like pups-/their brains [gushing] out all over, [soaking] the floor-/and ripping them from limb to limb to fix his meal/he [bolts] them down like a mountain lion, [leaving] no scrap,/[devouring] entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all”, while Odysseus can only watch the Cyclops’s “grisly work-/paralyzed, appalled” (9.323-332). The Cyclops wastes no time in gruesomely devouring two of Odysseus’s men.

Upon reaching the land of the Lotus-Eaters, Odysseus sends his men off to explore and report back to him. They hurry off and “[mingle] among the natives, Lotus-eaters” who have “no notion of killing [Odysseus’s] companions, not at all,/they simply [give] them the lotus to taste instead”, but “any crewman who [eats] the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,/[loses] all desire to send a message back, much less return,/their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-Eaters,/grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home/dissolved forever” (9.94-110). Once the Lotus-Eaters give Odysseus's men the lotus to eat, they lose all purpose and motivation to do anything but stay with the Lotus-Eaters and eat more lotus. The Lotus-Eaters, although they have “no notion of killing [Odysseus’s] companions”, hinder Odysseus’s progress by stopping his men from even wanting to proceed. All his men want to do is “linger there with the Lotus-Eaters”, without a care in the world. Without Odysseus’s help, his men would never escape the Lotus-Eaters because they’ve “lost all desire” to try to leave. While the Greeks value dedication and ambition, the Lotus-Eaters are lazy and purposeless. The Greeks see the Lotus-Eaters as inferior because they have no hunger to succeed; they are stagnant. The Lotus-Eaters also make Odysseus’s men forget why they are on a