Who's in the Wrong?
Getting mad at someone
is a relatively common feeling for any sentient being, really. If you're
sentient, you'll form and have your own opinions and ideas about how some
things should be in the world. And with roughly 20 quintillion
(20,000,000,000,000,000,000) creatures estimated to live on earth, it's no
surprise that at some point or another, a couple of them will disagree with one
another. Poseidon takes "disagreement" to a whole new level, though.
Maybe Poseidon figured that because he was one of the three major Greek gods,
he would have to take "disagreement" to godly proportions.
To be fair, Poseidon and
Odysseus don't have a history of being buddy-buddy with one another. They
supported the opposing armies in the Trojan war, with Poseidon rooting for the
Trojans and Odysseus being part of the Greek forces who fought and defeated the
Trojans. More importantly however, Odysseus blinded Polyphemus, a cyclops who's
one of Poseidon's many sons. By many, I mean more than 100 ones that are worth
mentioning.
Odysseus had the right
to blind Polyphemus in self-defense! Odysseus and his men had gotten stuck
on Polyphemus' island, and Polyphemus had been snacking on Odysseus' crew. To
be fair, Odysseus and his crew just kind of "showed up" at
Polyphemus' island, where Polyphemus just tended to his sheep, so an argument
could be made for both parties, really. I will say, Odysseus taunting
Polyphemus after he had blinded the cyclops was where he messed up, rubbing
salt into the wound and making Polyphemus pray to his dad, Poseidon, to either
smite Odysseus and his crew into oblivion or make his journey home miserable.
Poseidon chooses the second option, and does it well.
Getting mad if someone
blinds your son is *perfectly* reasonable, don't get me wrong. But Poseidon
acts like a cross between a pouty crybaby and a cranky curmudgeon
screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN" and pointing a shotgun at the kids on his
lawn. Except in this case, the kids are Odysseus and his crew, and the lawn is
all of the seas on earth. Poseidon makes Odysseus wander around the sea for 20
years, which is a pretty good chunk of a person's life, considering that the
average lifespan of a male is 76.4 years (in the modern day). So making
Odysseus sail around for 20 years meant that Poseidon took away 20/76.4, or
roughly 26.2% of Odysseus' life. That's more than a fourth of Odysseus' life
lost at sea. So tell me, did Odysseus and his men deserve the punishment for
crashing Polyphemus' island and deserve the punishment Poseidon dished out, or
did they have the right to defend themselves from being eaten by Polyphemus?
I think Odysseus was only sailing around for 3 years. That twenty years includes ten years fighting in Troy and seven on Ogygia, since Telemachus isn't much older than 25. I could be wrong though, since the timelines are sort of sketchy.
ReplyDeleteI think blame can be put pretty equally on Odysseus and Polyphemus for the situation they ended up in (Odysseus basically broke into Polyphemus' house and then showed too much pride by taunting him and revealing his name, but Polyphemus was eating people who hadn't really done too much wrong, and anyone stupid enough to yell "NO MAN IS BLINDING ME" when they need help deserves what they get) but I agree that Poseidon definitely went a little too far fulfilling his promise to Polyphemus.
Specifically, I feel like taking it out on his men was out of place. Odysseus blinded him, Odysseus taunted him, and Odysseus makes it home alive. Meanwhile, his men die painfully a long way from home. Yes, they ate the cattle, but they wouldn't have been stuck on the island if not for the curse Odysseus brought down on them.
I think that one of the goals of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is that the gods can easily become angry and will smite you if you cross them, so the fact that Poseidon kept Odysseus away for so long could be understood. These stories were also ways for people to teach their children to respect the gods, so showing lots of places where good sacrifice is rewarded and bad action is punished greatly is important.
ReplyDeleteI think Odysseus and definitely deserve the blame for how the interaction with Polyphemus ended. Odysseus makes lots of boneheaded, rash decisions like that cost him the lives of many of his men. That being said, I think Poseidon takes his punishment a little too far, and should be above spending 20 years making sure one human suffers. Also I don't see how after that long it would fun or enjoyable to mess with some guy you don't like.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting post. I could definitely relate to what you wrote in this post. I also felt at times that Odysseus was not necessarily in the right. It's very interesting how many sympathetic characters Odysseus runs into but ultimately harms or abandons. In some cases, you could write it off as saying that the cyclops are horrible monsters that eat some of his crew, so what Odysseus does has some justification. But Calypso has a really compelling argument to keep Odysseus on the island.
ReplyDeleteI think this brings up a really good moral question that all of us would have difficulty answering. To me, the important thing to note here is not what the actions were on either side, nor defenses of those actions, but the real message is about respect. The idea of xenia is to be welcoming because "all travelers are sent from Zeus" and you don't want to accidentally piss off a god. Well this is exactly what Odysseus does. In his taunting of Polyphemus, regardless of whether or not he knows that Polyphemus is tight with Poseidon, this is an accident that puts him on a bad side with a god. However, if I were Poseidon, I can't say that I would have given Odysseus such a harsh punishment.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I think I have more sympathy for Polyphemus than most people, the way he interacts with his sheep really endears me even if he just monches on men for no reason (which is definitely a big no-no in my eyes, don't get me wrong), so this might be a hot take, but I don't think that it's super unjustified that Odysseus get punished for being a bad guest and blinding Polyphemus BUT what I do think Poseidon is a bit of an ass for is punishing all of Odysseus' men. They were just chilling and Odysseus made some miscalculated decisions that got them all killed and ODYSSEUS got to survive? That part is unfair to me dawg.
ReplyDelete