Was Odysseus heroic in dealing with the cyclops?
Odysseus's encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus represents a "trial of the rode" conflict during his heroic journey back to Ithaca. During this encounter, Odysseus and his man are trapped in a cave with the Cyclops Polyphemus due to their own foolishness. To escape, Odysseus uses trickery, deception and bravery.
He accomplishes this by tricking the Cyclops into intoxication; meanwhile, Odysseus and his men had sharpened and heated a stake in which to blind the Cyclops with. That night when the Cyclops had fallen asleep, Odysseus and his men stab the Cyclops’s eye. When the Cyclops calls for help, he claims that "nobody" did it; a clever name that Odysseus had given the Cyclops as opposed to his own name. Next morning, Odysseus and his men tie themselves to the underbellies of the Cyclops’s sheep which graze regularly. Polyphemus is blind and cannot see them escape.
Odysseus was heroic in dealing with the Cyclops. He displayed courage in piercing the Cyclops’s eye; cleverness in his ability to intoxicate and trick the Cyclops; and intelligence in fashioning the idea to tie the men to the bellies of the goats. All of these attributes are essential in defining a heroic character.
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