Odyssey

Throughout the text of the Odyssey, Odysseus finds recourse to rely on his inner resource to surmount incredible odds in order to finish his journey home. Indeed, often we think of epic heroes using their enormous physical strength to solve a problem, and certainly, Odysseus does have recourse to physical means on more than one occasion. Nonetheless, it is more often that he uses his cleverness and mental agility to defeat opponents who often have greater or strength or significant enough numbers to overcome whatever strength he has. Indeed, this makes sense in the case of Odysseus, because as we know from the Iliad, it was his suggestion to overcome the Trojans by the use of the Trojan Horse. Here, too, Odysseus proved that he was able to solve a difficult conflict that violence could not solve through the power of his cleverness and vision. Indeed, in The Odyssey,...
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