This is the oldest story we have as a race, and it has got to be the first and oldest Mary Sue. So....Odysseus is gone ten years battling at Troy and FINALLY the war ends but it takes him another ten years to get back. He is "brave and heroic" but really came across as a braggart and d-bag. He EXPECTS people to offer him hospitality and offer him presents, he is a CONSTANT liar. Even when he gets home, he lies about who he is to Minerva until he realizes who she is. (Never trust a man that can lie so easy.)
He is cursed for having blinded the cyclops son of Neptune. (one of his heroic deeds) But, he gets to the island of this cyclops because of his own curiosity. His men had originally landed on a neighbor island where they ate wild sheep and goats. When they see the giant's house and treasures, he wants to wait for him to see if he can get presents, then he tries to bully him telling him that if he doesn't, Jove, the guardian of travelers will punish him. WTH? if I was the cyclops I would have killed the little d-bag too. Here the poor cyclops is minding his own business tending to his pets and this guy wants presents? Well, Odysseus blinds him after getting him drunk and escapes, but not before bragging to the giants. This is why he is cursed. The cyclops prays to his father, the sea god for punishment. He deserved getting punished, if u ask me.
But what a horrible punishment too, he wanders the ocean to and for landing on islands that always seem to have beautiful Nymphs, or Princesses, or Enchantresses that are just dying for some hunky loving and end up head over heels for him wanting him to stay. (calypso MAKES him stay on her island, living as a god with her forcing him to eat her food and have sex with her for years...)
Any advancementt he makes is due to the instructions of others, Minerva, Circe, Hermes....etc. His bad luck he blames on others (mostly his men) but seemed to me, as the result of his lazy butt falling asleep. ( when the crew releases the wind from the bag that makes a storm that throws them off course, when they are on the island of Apollo and the men kill the sacred cows cuz he's meditating). The fault always falls on some one else. The curse if because of the sea god. He is held up because of Calypso.....whine whine whine....bitch bitch bitch......
The icing on the cake, though, is the fact that he finally wants to get home because he misses his land and belongings. Not because he misses his wife and son. Wow. When he goes to Hades and speaks to the dead, his questions are all about wether his wife is true to him and taking care of his property and if his son is still holding his belongings.
Could a man be more self-centered? Why do we revere and praise this guy as a hero? The ONLY reason this book gets any star, is because I love Greek mythology. I thought, like with other classics I'm reading or re-reading as an adult, maybe I can interpret it differently and appreciate it better, whereas I might not have as a teen. Nope. Book sucks. I don't care if it is a classic and the oldest recorded story of man. It is a Mary-sue of wishful thinking and just as I would harshly judge a contemporary piece that replaces good story with fluff, I gladly shuffle this book back under my coffee table, hoping it does a better job of keeping my drinks from sliding to the floor, than it did at entertaining me.
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