I will be focusing on a passage in book nine, lines 44-60. Odysseus is telling the story of his sorrows. Odysseus tried very hard to prove that he was a fair man by saying, “…we shared it round so no one, not on my account, would go deprived of his fair share of spoils,” (49). Odysseus then continues to say, “Then I urged them to cut and run, set sail, but would they listen? Not those mutinous fools;” (51), and it seems as though he is just trying to make himself look good in this story and make his crew look bad. Is this truly how this story occurred?
Throughout the story Odysseus is compared to a God and it is said that his people love and respect him. If this is true, why would his crew have gone against his advice? Also, if Odysseus split everything evenly like he previously claimed, why would the crew need to stay in the city when they already had everything? It doesn’t make sense the way Odysseus tells this story. He puts all the blame on his crew but I do not believe this. I believe that Odysseus suggested that the crew and he should stay in the city but lied when relaying the story due to the disastrous outcome of this. It does not make sense for a crew to act mutinous towards Odysseus from the way he is described throughout the entire book. I think Odysseus was the one that was mystified by all of the wine, sheep, and cattle.
Odysseus wanted to make himself look good while telling the story of his troubles. The people he was telling this story too does not have too much prior knowledge of who Odysseus is or what he’s been through and could not be able to tell if he is lying or not. Nobody from Odysseus’ trials were present to correct him so he could twist his story however he wanted to make himself look good. Odysseus did not want these strangers to know that he got greedy and brought his crew to disaster so he instead made it appear to be his crew’s fault.