In Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus makes many choices that have both good and bad outcomes. The brave warrior is frequently established as a heroic, courageous figure who is an effective fighter who can hold his own in a fight, but this does not necessarily extend to the care and While he is a skilled strategist, often his pride gets in the way of sound strategy and he ends up making awful decisions to repair his ego. He is a very prideful figure, and so he often takes too many risks for the sake of effect or challenging himself. Odysseus, to that end, is not a worthy hero, as too many of his actions are not admirable. He allows his own pride to get other people killed, and place himself in great danger.
Odysseus has great reason to be prideful – he is good at nearly everything he does. The typical Homeric protagonist, he is strong and courageous, and hungers for more and more accomplishments. He is also tremendously confident and intelligent; he is able to get out of many dangerous situations by thinking his way out of them and believing in his plans. However, this leads to an incredible sense of overconfidence that very much gets him in much more trouble than he would have if he thought more strategically.
At many stops along his journey, he is tempted to stay and not come home yet, or lingers far too long to avoid getting in trouble; when he and his men go to the cave of Polyphemus, Odysseus stays far too long to drink all of the milk and cheese he discovers there, leading him to get trapped by the returning Cyclops. His worst decision is fuelled by his pride; the decision to tell the Cyclops his name as he departs. He says that no one can defeat the "Great Odysseus," when, up until then, the Cyclops did not know his name. Having defeated and blinded the Cyclops, who is Poseidon's son, Poseidon then vows to get the gods together to thwart Odysseus' plans to get home, which is what causes many of the events of The Odyssey, and the deaths of all of Odysseus' men. This simple, unnecessary move, made out of arrogance, is what gets his men killed.
Odysseus’ prideful nature is not meant to say that he does not learn from his mistakes; after seeing the hazardous journey he goes on as a result of his confession of his name to a defeated enemy, his return home sees him work with a bit more patience. In his attempts to get rid of Penelope’s suitors, he disguises himself as a beggar and allows the other suitors to tease and abuse him. He merely waits until he has set his trap to retaliate against them; this shows that he has set aside his prideful ways and grown as a person throughout his journey. The old Odysseus would have struck them down immediately, but he chose to wait for the right moment.
In conclusion, Odysseus’ pride is his downfall, making him an ultimately unworthy hero. He is a great warrior, but stoops to taunting and revenge to get what he wants. His bullheadedness causes his men to get killed, and he undergoes an arduous journey because of a mistake made out of arrogance. He does temper his pride by the time the gets back home to Penelope, but by that time he has already lost and endured so much because of his overconfidence.
Works Cited
Homer. The Odyssey.
