Just one bad day can lead a person to misfortune. Some people arise and take responsibility while others falter and fall. Tragedy can kill a person’s sanity no matter how good or bad their mind may be. The Greek king of Ithaca Odysseus is no different. Especially with the disaster that awaits him on his way home from waging war in Troy. This tragedy is told through two books, The Odyssey and Circe. King Odysseus is portrayed in both stories as a low mimetic mode and an Ironic hero. This is due to the initial tragedy, the mistakes along the way, and finally the failure to succeed in the end. A low mimetic mode hero from Northrop Frye’s research is a man that has many flaws that leads to tragedy and stops the hero or protagonist from ever succeeding (Frye 34). Odysseus also can fit into the Ironic mode category too because he becomes paranoid and loses at the end.
Primarily, Odysseus’s initial tragedy begins right after they leave Troy and are heading home. Odysseus makes many mistakes, which will be elaborated on later, which leads him to a prolonged return home. During The Odyssey, these mistakes weigh on Odysseus as he loses his crew and yearns to return to Ithaca. Throughout the book, he meets many obstacles that all started with a bad decision. However, it is not only the bad decision that weighs on him but also the Trojan War that has changed him. In the book Circe there is a scene in which Odysseus has been on the island with Circe for some time. During that time Circe realizes that Odysseus is trying to remember who he was before the war. During the book, Circe says to herself, “His domestic harmony with me was closer to a sort of rehearsal, I realized. When he sat by the hearth, when he worked in the garden, he was trying to remember the trick of it. How an axe might feel in wood instead of flesh” (Miller 223). This brings some understanding of the toll that the war alone has left on Odysseus’ shoulders, not including the mistakes that have cost him much of his struggle on his return to Ithaca his home. The original problem was how the war left him and the mistakes he makes leading to many deaths and a long, difficult journey.
Odysseus’ initial tragedy was due to the war and the many mistakes that he made along the way. The biggest mistake that Odysseus made during his journey home was letting his pride guide him. Throughout the journey, there are two big mistakes that he and his crew made that led them to their deaths. Thus, leading to Odysseus to be the only one to return after many years of paying for disrespecting both the Olympian Gods and the Titans. The first God that Odysseus enraged was Poseidon, God of the sea. He did this by tricking Poseidon’s son Polyphemus by saying his name was Noman. Odysseus then stabs out Polyphemus’ eye leaving him to yell for help, “My friends! Noman is killing me” (Homer 9. 409). Then after they got away Odysseus taunts him yelling, “Cyclops! If any moral asks you how/ your eye was mutilated and made blind, / say that Odysseus, the city-sacker, / Laertes’ son, who lives in Ithaca, / destroyed your sight” (Homer 9. 502-506). This pride led to a curse that delayed Odysseus’ return to Ithaca. Now that Polyphemus knew who took his sight, he prayed to Poseidon for help to punish them, therefore leading to a longer trip than was necessary. The next big mistake that Odysseus and his crew make is not directly Odysseus’ fault but due to him being the leader the fault falls on him. When he and his crew leave Circe’s island, they have specific instructions to travel past Scylla and around the island of Helios where he keeps his sheep. She tells them that if you hurt the sheep disaster will come. The crew eats the sheep when Odysseus is sleeping consequently leading to the death of the crew leaving only Odysseus. The pride of him and his crew cost them a safe trip home and one final tragedy awaited Odysseus.
The final defeat that Odysseus must face is disguised as a victory for him. Odysseus returns home to Ithaca and learns that suitors have taken control of his house and are trying to marry Penelope, his wife. Once he learns of this, he wants revenge and devises a plan to kill every one of the suitors mercilessly. He disguised himself as a beggar and with the help of his son Telemachus they dispatched the suitors and anyone that helped them. Odysseus exclaims to Telemachus:
“Now we must start
To clear the corpses out. The girls must help.
The clean my stately chairs and handsome tables
with sponges fine as honeycomb, and water.
When the whole house is set in proper order,
Restore my halls to health: take out the girls
between the courtyard wall and the rotunda.
Hack at them with long swords, eradicate
all life from them. They will forget the things
the suitors made them do with them in secret,
through Aphrodite” (Homer 22. 436-446).
Having done what, he did and pulling Telemachus along with has corrupted him. This plus the war has led Odysseus to be sadistic and paranoid since his people wanted to replace him. Odysseus’s success, in reality, was the final tragedy that pushed him to lose himself to become a monster and eventually his death. After Odysseus’s death, Telemachus and Penelope go to Circe’s island. Telemachus tells Circe, “He was sure that they were plotting against him. He wanted sentries posted all around the palace, day and night” (Miller 303). This paranoia is what finally got Odysseus in the end. Telegonous, son of Circe and unknown son of Odysseus went to Ithaca to meet his father. Odysseus returned to find Telegonous on the shore with a spear and suspected him to be a pirate coming to steal. Telemachus states, “I had heard the shouts and feared confrontation. Odysseus was not…welcoming in recent years. I came too late, but I saw the end. He had wrested away the spear. It was not by Telegonus’ hand that he died” (Miller 299). The paranoia that he had gained from the Trojan War and the many trials he faced on the way home ended with the final tragedy, death by his own hand.
Overall, in both The Odyssey and Circe, Odysseus meets many hardships and makes many mistakes that led to his downfall. Due to these misfortunes, Odysseus in comparison to Northrop Frye’s ideas is considered a low mimetic and ironic mode “hero”. Odysseus, throughout both books, is more of a protagonist than a hero and, by the end, is affected mentally to the point that he causes his own death.
