Rejoining our hero on Scheria he has
washed up onshore, made his connection with the king and queen, secured his
status as a guest friend and now he gets to enter into the next step of his
recovery. We're really in these books re, rebuilding
the hero. We saw in five him getting acquiring the
very basics that he needed to escape from Ogygia and have his own autonomy again.
In book six he pieces together the, the very rudimentary his ability to speak and
he gets some clothes on his back makes his way into the center of the palace, gets
himself a secured spot in this new city. Now he's going to slowly rebuild his
strength and pivotal to that is gonna be food.
He's got to eat somethings and then also we see him start to perform in these
physical games. The games play a role in book eight as
Odysseus is rebuilding himself and rebuilding his heroness.
Strength is an important thing of what it is to be a hero.
We also get in this, this exhibition of Odysseus' strength through the games.
There are some few other grace notes that show themselves as we're learning what it
is that makes Odysseus, Odysseus, someone so grand as he is.
We have a exhibition and a couple of subtle points of some extremely savvy
social instincts that are pretty clearly something to be that there, there, useful
for him and that are also something difficult to do, a little bit of a high
wire act but Odysseus shows himself extremely skilled at them.
For example, near the end of Book seven Odysseus shows us how alliances work.
You'll recall that he made this alliance with Al Sekawan, it's been very valuable
to him. After he comes makes his contact with
Queen Arete you'll notice a kind of strange back and forth between Alcinous
the King and Odysseus. Alcinous is ready to kind of scold his
daughter because Nausicaa has allowed Odysseus to come into the palace
unaccompanied. So now, who would do that, why wouldn't
she accompany you as a stranger into this city, that's real hospitality.
She should be doing that. So he's hinting that he's a little
disgruntled with his daughter at not displaying the kind of hospitality, Xenia
that we know is so important in this part of the in this part of the story.
Odysseus right away jumps in Nausicaa aside, and makes up a lie.
He tells how Cinna was right back to him and after he makes that comment went no,
no, no, no she offered to bring me to town but I insisted and I said I wanted to go
alone. I wasn't sure that you know, there might
be people who talked funny about the two of us.
Me and a young girl walking in and you might have disapproved.
So I insisted that I go in alone. Well that's of course a lie right.
Nausicaa said listen I, I don't wanna take you in there because people are going to
chatter and there's going to be a lot of you know gossip going on about me walking
with a strange man so don't do that. Odysseus now is protecting the one that
protected him. That white lie is only going to secure his
position with Nausicaa and it does him no harm with respect to anything else.
So it's an automatic kind of incremental gain in his closeness with Nausicaa and
his back and forth with her securing that relationship.
We also see in the contexts such as they happen in book eight that Odysseus knows
full well what to do in sometimes complex social interactions where conflict arises.
Remember the young bucks the prince whose named, they goes accurately translates as
Broadsea. In book eight it's on pages 196 and 97.
Broadsea comes over and starts taunting Odysseus.
Now, taunts are kind of standard for, standard stuff for heroes, taunts and
epithets, you take the stuffing out of your enemy and call them nasty names.
But when you do, you're being aggressive and getting in that person's face, that
person, if they're a real hero, is going to come right back at you.
Odysseus is not quite yet ready to do that.
You'll see that there's some teasing that happens early on, and he lets it go, lets
it go, lets it go. But then on page 196-197 when Broadsea
comes and really gets into his face, Odysseus draws a firm line.
And when he does he steps up and throws the discus farther then anyone had ever
seen. So Odysseus knows when to draw a line, he
also knows how to enforce that line. Those are tricky things, those are really
hard to do. And if your you know, your list of
leadership 101 this would be one of the ones to toss into the hopper.
When to give ground and be flexible and when it's necessary to draw a line.
And when you have to draw a line, you have to draw it with seriousness, you have to
be businesslike about it and not back down.
So Odysseus goes ahead and does that. He also shows later in book eight, page
204 in Fagles' translation, that knows when it's right to make up.
After the conflict has happened with Broadsie, and he showed himself worthy of
respect, and Broadsea does respect him. When Broadsea comes back to offer amends,
and offers him the sword to become friends.
Odysseus takes that right back, and, and, and is gracious about accepting the gift
and is ready to be friends with this person that had basically insulted him
before. So he knows not only when to draw the
line, but also to make up. So we're seeing him piece together of his
hereoness. And from what we've seen so far in what
makes up a hero, we can start to sketch in a rough definition or at least a rough set
of qualities, characteristics, and attributes that we see in heroes.
First of all they suffer, odysseus suffers tremendously.
We're only at the very beginning of the descriptions of the suffering.
They're pretty hair curling already, but wait till we get to books nine through
twelve. The hero also endures.
So these difficult situations don't only cause the hero pain, but the hero bears up
under the pain and endures. A hero is going to be intelligent it's
going to be able to use their mind to figure way out of, way the best course of
action in any situation. Hero will also be a great craftsman.
Remember Odysseus building his boats. He's good at sailing, he's good at discus
throwing, he's just good at things. He's good at, he's good at crafts, a very
skilled person. A hero is also going to be, maybe, crafty
Someone who's a little sneaky. Odysseus is a big liar.
He's lied a tremendous amount already. It's always been to a purpose he doesn't
just lie willy-nilly, but he does is a lie, this craftiness is something that we
are going to see him exhibiting. A hero clearly gains knowledge through
experience. It's an experiential kind of knowledge
that we see our hero gaining especially through travel.
But this knowledge is much more than just data.
Yes, data is important. Odysseus needs to learn the details of
where he is going, but his living through the experience always is something that
gains an additional kind of knowledge for him, something extraordinarily valuable.
A hero is something you can't just Google it.
You can't just kind of, you know, get to know heroeness, and then just you know,
once you do you got it. That's not it, it's not easy.
It's something that you, it's hard won and has to be won through the only through the
knowledge that only comes through experience.
A hero makes alliances. Odysseus is good at drawing up those
connections. A hero also clearly has strength.
That's being put together, re, re, re, reassembled in book eight.
A Hero also sadly for you aspiring business,
business men and business women out there page 198 in Fagles' translation in book
eight, hero is not a merchant. When they're insulting Odysseus those
young bucks and taking the stuffing out of him.
They tease him and call him you must be some kind of a merchant or something.
And Odysseus is greatly offended by that. So apparently that's not the way forward.
You got to be better equipped to do stuff on the battlefield.
That's typically where the hero shows his strength.
So we got to know Odysseus through this interactions that he's had so far his
experience on Ogygia experience with Nausicaa and with the Phaeacians.
But who is he really? Remember by the end of book eight, he is
still nameless. We don't even know who he is, we have not
heard his name. It's related to us through Homer's
narrative but looking at it and through the eyes of the Phaeacians, he is still
anonymous. What's his identity?
Trying to figure that out is a tricky business.
We've watched him piece together some pieces of it through in five and forward.
But in book eight, there's a statement. From Alcinous' mouth that talks about now,
you know, it's time for us to get to know you, Odysseus, and who you are.
We need to know your identity. And when he does make this statement, we
get a really clear definition about what it is that these ancient Greeks in mythic
times thought an identity was all about. So let's have a look at this, passage at
the end of book eight where Alcinous, the king, is talking, talking directly to
Odysseus. So don't be crafty now, my friend.
Don't hide the truth I'm after. Fair is fair.
Speak out. Come, tell us the name they call you there
at home. Your mother, father, townsmen.
Neighbors, roundabout, surely no man in the world is nameless, all told.
Born high, born low, as soon as he sees the light, his parents always name him,
once he's born. And tell me your land, your people, your
city too. So our ships can sail you home, their
whips will speed them there. And then he goes on jumping a little bit
ahead in the text, but come, my friend, tell us your story now and tell it truly.
Where have your rovings forced you? What lands had been, have you seen?
What sturdy towns, what men themselves, who were wild, savage, lawless.
Who were friendly to strangers, God-fearing men.
Tell me. So, in order to understand who Odysseus is
we've got to know a few things. Definitely we need to know his name.
We need also to know his parents name. That is his lineage.
We need to know his land. Where he's from.
The name of his city and his town and what it's like.
So name, lineage the land you're from and then finally this last piece.
We need also to know your past. We need to know your own history.
These are the pieces that are gonna make up a heroic identity.
And Odysseus in order to plug us in to the rest of himself, he's going to have to
take over and give us some more details about what this background is all about.
Odysseus is about to launch in, in Books nine through twelve, take over the
narrative as a whole and give us his own full story about where he's been.