The passage I choose was in Book 9 Lines 207-229. In this section Odysseus is telling his story to Alcinous. He gets to part of how he and some of his crew mates venture out and explore the island of the Cyclops’. Upon arriving to one of the Cyclops’ house, he notes that the Cyclops is out tending to his flock. He and his crew mates immediately invite themselves into his home, and help themselves to his cheese.
I found this passaging interesting because the whole reason why they went to explore the island was to see whether or not the Cyclops’ knew right from wrong. In other words, they wanted to make sure that they were moral beings. I found their actions to be contradicting of the host and guest dynamic. As, throughout the book the guest is invited inside the host’s home. Then the host serves up a feast and offer a sacrifice to the gods. However, Odysseus and his men were never invited in by the Cyclops, in fact he wasn’t aware of their presence. And when the Cyclops does arrive home; they continue to hide out of fear. I also found this scene to be ironic since Odysseus wants to investigate the “savage with no notion of right and wrong”. Nevertheless, he and his men become the savages for entering the Cyclops’ home without permission. As they watch him work on his chorus, the Cyclops notices their presence and asks them:
“Who are you strangers? Sailing the seas huh?
Where from, and what for? Pirates, Probably
Roaming around causing people trouble.”
Going back to the host/guest dynamic their introduction with the Cyclops is different. The Cyclops assumes the worst profession for Odysseus and his men. As they were sneaking around his home and hid when he returned. Once they start talking Odysseus works up the courage without the help of Athena, and asks the Cyclops if he will “give them gifts that are due to strangers”. To which the Cyclops tells him, he does not fear the gods as his kind is much stronger. To answer Odysseus question on whether the Cyclops is moral or immoral. I would say that he is moral for not giving his intruders gifts. On the other hand, he is immoral for holding them hostage and making a feast out of some of Odysseus’ men.
I didn’t really think about the guest-host relationship “rules” that were violated during this segment of the Odyssey until I read this blog post. Odysseus and his crew are kind of acting like Penelope’s suitors here. They aren’t invited and just waltz into the cave. However, they were trying to find out if the people who lived here were savages or not, since they got that impression by just being there.
I find your analysis shows the concept of guest host confusing towards the end. When you gave the question whether the cyclops is moral or immoral, you weren’t clear on your stance because you defended both sides. But, I agree with your point that the cyclops never invited Odysseus and his men into his home rather ran into them and confronted were on their identity.
Hi Tiannis,
Here, you do an excellent job of connecting your passage to larger themes in the text. Not only that, you point out that the passage is a really complicated example of the guest-host relationship; Odysseus is “testing” Polyphemous as a host, and in so doing, he fails to be a good guest (not only does he enter the home without permission, he sticks around in hopes of a great gift. Judging from other moments in the poem, it seems that an ideal guest should never desire gifts out of pure greed, even though he may expect and want gifts. It’s a fine line!).
When it comes to writing the paper, which will involve passage analysis, work on digging into the details–the specific words and phrases–of the passage you choose. One way to do this well is to focus on a much shorter set of lines, and open out FROM those lines to 1) the immediate context (a longer passage, an entire book of the poem) and 2) the epic as a whole.
Strong work overall.
Prof Kolb