Odysseus' Questionable Pursuit of Glory

For the majority of Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus appears as a very crafty and cunning character who finds solutions to most of his problems by out-witting whatever enemy lies in his path, whether it be the gods or some mythical creature like a cyclops. While there are a few instances in the poem where we actually get to see his quick-witted thinking firsthand--albeit even the majority of these scenes are told in the past tense by Odysseus narrating his story to the king and queen--this guise of acuity and trickery that surrounds Odysseus for the most part comes from the numerous epithets that are constantly associated with his name and the various stories that are associated with Odysseus to underscore his keen nature. The classic story that we are reminded of is that of the Trojan Horse in the Iliad, as Odysseus in essence crafted the plan that finally ended the way between the Greeks and Trojans. Despite Odysseus' alleged past of immense guile and ingenuity, the climactic scene of the Odysseus is anything but this. Despite the cunning persona that has been placed around Odysseus throughout the entirety of The Odyssey, Odysseus actually forgoes trickery and deception in the exhilarating battle with the suitors, instead embracing his warrior side. Considering this other side of Odysseus that was respected back when he fought in Troy, the initial aftermath of the battle is still somewhat satisfying, with Odysseus finally reclaiming his palace after 20 years away from home. After the battle, we only really have two major reservations with how everything went down: the fact that all of the suitors were killed, despite some of them acting amicably towards beggar-Odysseus, and Odysseus' brutal act of ordering the women who slept with the suitors to be slaughtered. The former of these can be explained by Athena's unwavering desire for bloodshed, as even Odysseus desires for Amphinomus, a "good" suitor, to live, while the latter can only be explained by Odysseus' headlong desire for glory. Despite the ending of the poem playing out in a fairly satisfactory way that we expected, with Odysseus reclaiming his throne and reuniting with his family, his egregious actions after the battle, as a result of his overwhelming desire for revenge and "justice," take away from his success and the glory that he receives.

As a prominent soldier who fought in the Trojan war, Odysseus' pursuit of glory is natural, just like that of several other characters in the Odyssey's predecessor, the Iliad. The first major instance of Odysseus' desire for glory takes place in the scene inside Polyphemus' cave. Despite Odysseus' sharpness and presence of mind that allow him to trick Polyphemus and exit his cave, Odysseus falters almost immediately after the escape, letting his pride get the best of him while he screams his true name to Polyphemus. What little satisfaction Odysseus gets from deceiving Polyphemus is more than made up for by Poseidon's immense wrath which causes him great trouble for the next several years overseas. In a measly attempt to achieve glory by proclaiming to the world that it was he, Odysseus, who tricked the cyclops, Odysseus' bravado backfires. In fact, Odysseus' pursuit of glory is so apparent throughout the poem that when he visits the underworld (or rather when he describes visiting the underworld to Alcinous and Arete), the ghost of Achilles actually warns Odysseus to not let glory take over his mind: "No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--some dirt-poor tenant farmer who crapes to keep alive--than rule down here over all the breathless dead" (11.555-58). Achilles points out to Odysseus that his own pursuit of glory during the Trojan war was his downfall, and now he regrets the current position that it has placed him in. The fact that Achilles feels the need to tell Odysseus this means that he senses the same desire for glory thriving inside of Odysseus, and therefore warns him to not let his pursuit of glory impede his return home, as it did when he shouted his name to Polyphemus.

Despite Achilles' warnings, Odysseus actions in the battle scene with the suitors, and especially the aftermath when he order the women to be slaughtered, still follow a path of glory and honor that he was warned about. We can observe Odysseus' initial greed for glory in the scene in book 21 when Telemachus is stringing the bow for the contest that Penelope has contrived. After his third attempt, it appears as if Telemachus will actually be able to prove his strength by stringing his father's bow and passing the arrow through all the axe heads, but Odysseus quickly shuts down Telemachus' moment of glory, insisting that if Telemachus succeeded in the competition, it would take away from Odysseus' feat. While this particular scene is in part to preserve Odysseus' disguise as a beggar, we can still observe the dynamic between father and son in which Odysseus has to appear above Telemachus and the other suitors, achieving glory by showing the rest of them up. This tendency of Odysseus to prove himself in competition is also apparent in book 8, when he boasts that he can beat all of the men in any contest but running, and takes immense pride in his victory. The truly egregious act that causes us to reconsider Odysseus as a hero comes after the battle is over, when Odysseus orders for the slaughter of the 12 disloyal women in his palace: "And once you've put the entire house in order, march the women out of the great hall--between the roundhouse and the courtyard's strong stockade--and hack them with your swords, slash out all their lives--blot out of their minds the joys of love they relished under the suitors' bodies, rutting on the sly!" (22.465-470). Despite already having killed all the suitors, Odysseus feels he must go further to satisfy his desire for revenge. In doing this, Odysseus relishes in an act of horrifying nature, eagerly directing Telemachus to slaughter the unfaithful women in gory detail, simply for sleeping with the greedy suitors. It is Odysseus' sadistic orders and brutal concept of "justice" that cause us to question his morality as a hero at this point in the poem. He has already completed the heroic task of expelling the suitors from his home (by killing them) but feels that me must extend his glory even further by exacting justice and revenge upon even the women who are associated with them. We can observe a strong parallel to the Iliad between Odysseus' actions at this point of the poem and those of Achilles. After his epic fight with Hector, Achilles decides that simply defeating Troy's greatest warrior isn't enough to sate his desire for glory, and thus proceeds to humiliate Hector by tying his dead body to a chariot and dragging it around all of Troy so that everyone will know of his victory. Odysseus' actions with the slaughter of the women--who, importantly, were unarmed and weren't even present when the battle occurred--appear in a similar light, as the killing seems very after-the-fact and unnecessary, simply to prove a point and give him a stronger sense of satisfaction, rather than actually do anything to impact the battle. Thus, Odysseus' radical actions towards the end of the poem occur as a result of his extensive desire for glory, just as Achilles and so many other characters from Greek and Roman mythology, and cause us to reconsider Odysseus' position as the "good guy" hero in the poem.