History Literature / TheOdyssey

''The Odyssey'' (Greek: ''Ὀδύσσεια'', ''Odýsseia'') is one of the epics of Literature/TheTrojanCycle and one of the [[OlderThanFeudalism oldest recorded stories]]. The original was reputedly composed by the blind poet Creator/{{Homer}} and transmitted orally until it was (according to tradition) written down and standardised at the behest of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus in about 550 BC.

The Odyssey focuses on Odysseus (the Latinized name ''Ulysses'' is sometimes used in English), king of Ithaca, a small island off the west coast of Greece. After the successful sacking of Troy, which took ten years (depicted partially in ''Literature/TheIliad''), Odysseus earns the ire of Poseidon on his way home by blinding Polyphemus, the {{cyclops}} son of Poseidon, and boasting about it. In response, Poseidon proceeds to make the journey back to Ithica as miserable as possible as revenge. Meanwhile, Ithaca is taken over by a large amount of suitors, all of whom are trying to win Penelope's hand in marriage, but Penelope is having none of it.

* AdaptationalHeroism: There were a lot of folk traditions that Penelope were not faithful to Odysseus, with her giving birth to Pan (with the father being either Apollo, Hermes or the 108 suitors -- yes, she had sex with ''all of them'') and was banished by Odysseus to Mantineia when he returned. ''The Odyssey'', if it doesn't predate these myths, chose to remove all of them to depict her as a tragic figure.

* BadassBoast: Odysseus does this to Polyphemus the cyclops. [[UnbuiltTrope This bites him in the ass]] when Polyphemus, having learned Odysseus's name through his boasting, invokes a favor from his father Poseidon to make his journey home a living nightmare. [[PapaWolf Daddy delivers]].
* BadassNormal: Compared to some of the more well-known Greek heroes, Odysseus is a relatively normal guy. He doesn't have supernatural strength like Heracles, isn't invincible like Achilles, doesn't rely on magic items like Perseus, and isn't directly related to any of the Greek gods.[[note]]Though tradition claims that he's the great-grandson of Hermes.[[/note]] He's just a smart dude in good shape who just happens to have Athena's favor.

* BigBad: Poseidon. Granted he has a good reason for it, seeing as [[PapaWolf Odysseus had blinded one of his sons]]. Still, sending the guy through ''that much'' suffering seems like a bit much.

* BluffTheImpostor: When a stranger walks up to Penelope and claims to be her lost husband Odysseus, Penelope casually asks for Odysseus's bed to be prepared but outside the bedroom. The stranger, who really ''is'' Odysseus, is dismayed by this, since he had built the bed himself on the stump of an olive tree, making it impossible to move the bed without sawing off the stump (something only he and Penelope knew about, supposedly). As he recounts all the work he put into making it, he realizes that she had just been testing him. The funny thing is that he ''expected'' her to test him, and told his son that she would, and he still fell for it.

* CentralTheme: Surviving requires cunning, daring, and ruthlessness. Even when you have nothing left, you still have your wits and you can find a way to escape any trap, even ones set by the Gods.

* {{Determinator}}: Odysseus is deadfast on returning to his homestead no matter what's thrown at him by anyone. He only thinks of giving up once, jumping off his boat during a storm [[ItMakesSenseInContext made by his own men]]. He, of course, doesn't go through with it because how could he tell the story?

** While going to meet Circe Odysseus runs into Hermes who casually explains how to beat her.
** When Odysseus is shipwrecked in a storm sent by Poseidon after leaving Calypso's island, he is rescued by the sea-goddess Ino aka Leucothea.

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: A lesser example: Menelaus tells Telemachus about the time he was trapped trying to get home from Troy because he had annoyed the gods by neglecting to make sacrifices to them before leaving. To find out how to escape, he had to trap the minor sea god Proteus, which he managed with some advice from a helpful nymph.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Poseidon already had it in for Odysseus (the Sea God favoured the Trojans and wasn't happy with Odysseus's [[TrojanHorse horse trick]]), but once Odysseus blinded Poseidon's son, the cyclops Polyphemus, [[PapaWolf the gloves]] came off.

** For the era, the fact that Odysseus does not have children by any of his female slaves is highly unusual, although here he seems to follow in the footsteps of his father -- Homer considers it worth mentioning that Laërtes never touched Eurycleia (Odysseus's and Telemachus's nurse) out of fear of offending his wife.

** Eat Odysseus's sailors and reap the consequences, Polyphemus. Odysseus, who narrates it, gives a long, lovely description of how the eye boils under the hot wooden spike before it gets twisted and ripped out.

* FathersQuest: After being 10 years away from his family, Odysseus wants to return back to his wife and son. And an angry and vengeful Poseidon won't stop him!

* {{Hypocrite}}: The suitors are shown as unwilling to extend SacredHospitality to a simple beggar, even though they've been abusing it themselves for a decade. The fact that this "simple beggar" turns out to be the man who actually owns the house is just the icing on the cake and further justifies Odysseus's RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
* IAmAHumanitarian: Not only Polyphemus but also the Lestrygonian people, who ate the crewmembers of several of the ships in Odysseus's small fleet. His ship is the only one to escape. There's also Scylla.
** In a roundabout way, so is Circe. Pork was one of the most commonly eaten meats in ancient Greece. So when she turns Odysseus's crew into pigs and starts feeding them acorns, it's clear she was fattening them up to later butcher and eat.

* ImpossiblyDeliciousFood: We know, we know, never refuse free food, but it's probably not a good idea to accept handouts from the Lotus-Eaters.

* MultipleEndings: At the end of Homer's poem, Odysseus and Penelope are reunited, but he still has to go on his pilgrimage to appease Poseidon. So what happens next? Numerous Greek and other writers from antiquity provide a plethora of different answers for you to choose from:
** As Tiresias foretold, once Odysseus gets the thing with carrying the oar inland over with, he and Penelope live happily together, get another son called Ptoliporthes ("ravager of cities") until Odysseus's peaceful death.

** The suitors' families bring their grievances to the court of Neoptolemus, Achilles's son. He orders Odysseus into exile (because he hopes to gain Odysseus's island Cephallenia). In this version, Odysseus ends up marrying the daughter of king Thoas of Aitolia (resultant son: Leontophonus).

** A much later history has an ancient Odysseus revisiting the places where he went, finding that almost everyone has either died or gone away. When he reaches Calypso's island, the only character who is still around, he dies and the nymph buries Odysseus there.
** Finally, a real feast of tropes popular in Italy: in one of the lost epics of Literature/TheTrojanCycle, the ''Telegony'', Odysseus fathers a son, [[HeroicBastard Telegonus]], with Circe. When Telegonus comes of age he goes out to seek his father, but when he arrives on Ithaca the two get into a fight without recognizing each other and he unintentionally [[SelfMadeOrphan kills Odysseus]]. When the truth emerges, Circe brings him, Telemachus, and Penelope to her island of Aiaia and grants the latter two immortality. In the end, Circe marries Telemachus, and [[ComfortingTheWidow Penelope marries]] [[OedipusComplex Telegonus]], which results in a TangledFamilyTree. The story was also dramatized by Sophocles in the lost tragedy ''Odysseus Akanthoplex'', with the added detail that an oracle foretells that Odysseus will be killed by his own son, so he banishes Telemachus to another island...[[YouCantFightFate but, of course, the oracle wasn't referring to him]].

* MyGirlIsNotASlut: Penelope.

* NarrativePoem: Not ''quite'' the UrExample...

* PapaWolf: An UrExample. Odysseus will do anything to return back to his wife and son. And he's willing to face monsters, witches, and POSEIDON himself if he has to.

** Notably, Odysseus ends up having to choose between them ''twice''. First, he's with his crew on a ship and orders them to pass by Scylla. Scylla (giant tentacled beast) kills six men, but it was better than Charybdis (enormous whirlpool), who would have swallowed up the entire ship. Later on, Odysseus has to pass by them in a raft and chooses Charybdis this time. Being alone, he's able to cling to a tree near the whirlpool and makes it back onto the raft after it's swallowed and then expelled.
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie: Odysseus is good at making up backstory from whole cloth, which he makes use of when he's [[KingIncognito trying to keep his identity a secret]]. It helps that when people press him for certain details, said details are about the person he claimed to have met (Odysseus, i.e. ''himself''), and not about the land he supposedly hailed from.

* SociopathicHero: Odysseus, as Harold Bloom mentions, is a man you don't want to cross or be around too long. He's willing to do nearly anything to survive, including [[RapePillageAndBurn sack towns and villages]], sell people into slavery, lie, and manipulate, and in the end, after retaking Ithaca, he brutally murders not only the suitors but also the palace servant girls in highly brutal ways. Of course, the Greek idea of TheHero is entirely different from the Christian, chivalric, and modern conception.

* TheresNoPlaceLikeHome: Ithaca to Odysseus. Granted, it is described as rocky and the life he led there was frugal, but that's where he wants to return to, and so he rejects offers to stay in more pleasant and richer places.

''The Odyssey'' (Greek: ''Ὀδύσσεια'', ''Odýsseia'') is one of the epics of Literature/TheTrojanCycle and one of the [[OlderThanFeudalism oldest recorded stories]]. The original was reputedly composed by the blind poet Creator/{{Homer}} and transmitted orally until it was (according to tradition) written down and standardised at the behest of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus in about 550 BCE.

It's about Odysseus (the Latinized name ''Ulysses'' is sometimes used in English), king of Ithaca, a small island off the west coast of Greece. After the successful sacking of Troy, which took ten years (depicted partially in ''Literature/TheIliad''), Odysseus earns the ire of Poseidon on his way home, causing the sea god to do everything he can to keep Odysseus and his band of soldiers from returning to Ithaca.

The poem opens with the gods debating about Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Odysseus left his infant son and wife, Penelope, for UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar, but after the Fall of Troy, he and his crew ended up stranded, and Odysseus had been away from home now for 20 years. Athena heads down to Ithaca to tell the now-20-year-old Telemachus that it's time to man up and find out about his father. See, about three years before these 108 suitors showed up for Penelope and began trying to seduce her, Telemachus was too much of a wimp to do anything. Penelope had managed to keep them at bay using a clever trick--she told them she would marry after she finished weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, but she always undid the day's work at night. This kept them fooled for a while, but the plot is eventually discovered. So Telemachus goes and chats with several characters who survived UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar--Menelaus and Nestor--who tell him about his dad and how [[BadassNormal badass]] he is. Unfortunately, he neglected to inform Penelope of his departure, and now the suitors are out to murder him too.

Meanwhile, Odysseus is stuck on Calypso's island, crying on a rock because he misses his family. Hermes shows up and tells Calypso to let him go, and she does. Poseidon shows up again and shipwrecks Odysseus, but he manages to swim ashore and is aided by the princess of the Phaeacians, Nausicaa[[note]]who would one day [[Manga/NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind inspire]] Creator/HayaoMiyazaki with her pluckiness[[/note]]. He ends up chilling with the Phaeacians and recounts to them what he's been doing since the Fall of Troy ten years ago.

Basically, King Agamemnon and his brother got into a fight over sacrificing, which resulted in the Greeks getting split up. Through many other fights, Odysseus ended up with a much smaller crew. Then they got lost and ended up at the cave of the King of the Winds, and he gives them wind in a pouch so they can get home. But the [[TooDumbToLive crew]] are all idiots, and they open the winds so they all can't get home. Oh, and like most wind tends to do, this creates a storm and they get lost. Again. This is a recurrent theme throughout the poem.

First, they end up on an island full of [[LotusEaterMachine Lotus-Eaters]], who entrance the crew and give them [[MushroomSamba a good time,]] so they forget they want to go home. Odysseus drags them back to the ship, and they carry on, only to end up on the island of the Cyclops. Once again, the crew (along with Odysseus) show their wit by eating the food before the Cyclops, Polyphemus, shows up. He is a bit angry, demonstrated by the fact that he bites off the heads of two of the crew. Odysseus tells Polyphemus that his name is "Nobody," then [[EyeScream blinds ol' Poly with a sharpened olive branch]] [[IncendiaryExponent which is on fire]], so that when Polyphemus tries to explain to the other Cyclops what happened, he can only say, "Nobody did this!" Odysseus escapes but, being an idiot, he [[BullyingADragon gloats]], saying, "Cyclops, if anyone ever asks you how you came by your blindness, tell him your eye was put out by Odysseus, sacker of cities, the son of Laërtes, who lives in Ithaca" (9.506). Had the ancient Greeks had social security numbers and public messaging handles on Internet, he would have thrown those in too.

Unfortunately, Polyphemus is [[PapaWolf Poseidon]]'s son. Yes, the same Poseidon whom Odysseus has repeatedly managed to piss off since he left Troy.

Like many fathers would be, Poseidon is (even more) pissed that his son, who only had one eye to begin with, is now blind, so he seeks (even more) revenge on Odysseus. First, Odysseus ends up with the witch Circe, who turns his crew into pigs (they get better after he makes a threat and sleeps with her), then he goes to Hades and [[DeadPersonConversation chats with a few people]], including [[BlindSeer Tiresias]]--who tells him that even after he gets home, he won't be able to stay forever. After avoiding the Sirens and Scylla & Charybdis, the crew then kill all the Cattle of the Sun, who belong to Helios, [[TooDumbToLive despite being warned not to]]. [[RocksFallEveryoneDies Lightning falls, the crew dies]], and Odysseus is shipwrecked on Calypso's island. She makes him her manwhore for seven years and Odysseus cries on some more rocks. [[HowWeGotHere This takes us up to the present]], or at least, the first chapter.

After this long {{flashback}} (about a third of the story), Odysseus finally gets home and finds the suitors still abusing hospitality (a capital sin in Ancient Greece) and trying to woo his wife. Odysseus reveals himself to his son, who has recently returned, and they begin to plot. The next day, Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors and kills them along with the twelve housemaids who slept with them before finally revealing himself to his wife. In typical Homeric fashion, [[NoKillLikeOverKill this takes seventy-five pages.]] Odysseus tells Penelope that he'll have to leave eventually again, given what Tiresias prophesized, but in the meantime, he's home.

Of course, [[EndingFatigue it's not over]]. Odysseus goes and talks to his dad, Laërtes, while the suitors talk to the dead in Hades, and the suitors' parents plot to kill Odysseus. They all show up to fight him, Athena stands by Odysseus, Zeus throws in a lightning bolt for emphasis, then [[DeusExMachina Athena calls the whole fight off and makes the parents forget their sons died in a bloody, horrific massacre]].

And yes, many historians believe the Homer part of the poem ended with Odysseus revealing himself to Penelope, and that someone else tacked on the end.

Of course, [[EndingFatigue it's not over]]. Odysseus goes and talks to his dad, Laërtes, while the suitors talk to the dead in Hades, and the suitors' parents plot to kill Odysseus. They all show up to fight him, Athena stands by Odysseus, Zeus throws in a lightning bolt for emphasis, then Athena calls the whole fight off and makes the parents forget their sons died in a bloody, horrific massacre.

Because of its age, the poem will be the UrExample or TropeMaker of quite a few of the following tropes.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Possibly the UrExample. After 20 years of suffering, Odysseus makes it home, reclaims his throne, and reunites with his family.

First, they end up on an island full of [[LotusEaterMachine Lotus-Eaters]], who entrance the crew and give them [[MushroomSamba a good time,]] so they forget they want to go home. Odysseus drags them back to the ship, and they carry on, only to end up on the island of the Cyclops. Once again, the crew (along with Odysseus) show their wit by eating the food before the Cyclops, Polyphemus, shows up. He is a bit angry, demonstrated by the fact that he bites off the heads of two of the crew. Odysseus tells Polyphemus that his name is "Nobody," then [[EyeScream blinds ol' Poly with a sharpened olive branch]] [[IncendiaryExponent which is on fire]], so that when Polyphemus tries to explain to the other Cyclops what happened, he can only say, "Nobody did this!" Odysseus escapes but, being an idiot, he [[BullyingADragon gloats]], saying, "Cyclops, if anyone ever asks you how you came by your blindness, tell him your eye was put out by Odysseus, sacker of cities, the son of Laërtes, who lives in Ithaca" (9.506). Had the Greeks had social security numbers and public messaging on Internet, he would have thrown those in too.

->"ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
->πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν..."
->''Ándra moi énnepe, moûsa, polýtropon, hòs mála pollà\\
plánchthe, épeì Troíes hieròn ptolíethron épersen...''\\
(Tell me, Muse, of the cunning man who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famed city of Troy...)
-->-- '''Homer''', ''The Odyssey'' Bk.I:1-2.

The poem opens with the gods debating about Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Odysseus left his infant son and wife, Penelope, for UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar, but after the Fall of Troy, he and his crew ended up stranded, and Odysseus had been away from home now for twenty years. Athena heads down to Ithaca to tell the now-20-year-old Telemachus that it's time to man up and find out about his father. See, about three years before these 108 suitors showed up for Penelope and began trying to seduce her, Telemachus was too much of a wimp to do anything. Penelope had managed to keep them at bay using a clever trick--she told them she would marry after she finished weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, but she always undid the day's work at night. This kept them fooled for a while, but the plot is eventually discovered. So Telemachus goes and chats with several characters who survived UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar--Menelaus and Nestor--who tell him about his dad and how [[BadassNormal badass]] he is. Unfortunately, he neglected to inform Penelope of his departure, and now the suitors are out to murder him too.

[[folder: Tropes A-M]]

* AdaptationalHeroism: There were a lot of folk traditions that Penelope were not faithful to Odysseus, with her giving birth to Pan (with the father being either Apollo, Hermes or the 108 suitors - yes, she had sex with ''all of them'') and was banished by Odysseus to Mantineia when he returned. The Odyssey chose to remove all of these myths to depict her as a tragic figure.

** Penelope waits twenty years for a husband that's believed to be dead and never caves to any of the suitors that approach her. Odysseus, on his journey home, ends up in the beds of multiple women, without tarnishing his reputation as a hero. This would already be justified by the societal norms of the time, even assuming either encounter was [[QuestionableConsent consensual]].
** For the era, the fact that Odysseus does not have children by any of his female slaves is highly unusual, although here he seems to follow in the footsteps of his father - Homer considers it worth mentioning that Laërtes never touched Eurycleia (Odysseus's and Telemachus's nurse) out of fear of offending his wife.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Possibly the UrExample. After twenty years of suffering, Odysseus makes it home, reclaims his throne, and reunites with his family.

* HangingAround: The Odyssey has the oldest recorded example of hanging as a form of execution in the part of the poem in which Odysseus returns home and is met with all of the suitors who have tried to woo his wife in his absence. [[spoiler: He slaughters all of them and then punishes the 12 maids who slept with them, first by forcing them to clear away the suitors' dead bodies, then by [[DisproportionateRetribution hanging them all from one rope]].]]

** Telemachus ends up marrying Nestor's daughter Polycaste (whom he met in the Odyssey) or Nausicaa (who felt attracted to his father).

[[folder: Tropes N-Z]]

* OldDog: Argos, who dies at an age of at least ''twenty years''.

* [[PalsWithJesus Pals With Gods]]: Many examples, and on a few occasions Homer lampshades Odysseus's piety - not stinting with the burnt offerings to the gods even when there isn't much around that can be sacrificed.

* TragicIntangibility: Odysseus attempts to hug his mother's ghost not once but three times in Book XI, only to pass through her and be left with his sorrow.

* YouWakeUpOnABeach: Odysseus wakes up naked on a beach at the end of book 5 (shortly after the protagonist is introduced: the first four books focus on Telemachus). He is found by Nausicaa and her maids.

Basically, King Agamemnon and his brother got in a fight over sacrificing, which resulted in the Greeks getting split up. Through a whole bunch of other fights, Odysseus ended up with a much smaller crew. Then they got lost and ended up at the cave of the King of the Winds, and he gives them wind in a pouch so they can get home. But the [[TooDumbToLive crew]] are all idiots, and they open the winds so they all can't get home. Oh, and like most wind tends to do, this creates a storm and they get lost. Again. This is a recurrent theme throughout the poem.

** Athena intervening to prevent a feud after Odysseus kills the suitors. This had upset the villagers, who now lost two generations of men (the sailors and the suitors), and want revenge. Athena thinks otherwise.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Poseidon already had it in for Odysseus (the Sea God favored the Trojans and wasn't happy with Odysseus's [[TrojanHorse horse trick]]), but once Odysseus blinded Poseidon's son, the cyclops Polyphemus, [[PapaWolf the gloves]] came off.

* DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal: Very much averted when Calypso takes a fancy to the handsome sailor who got stranded on her island. Yes, Odysseus lets her drag him to her bed because it's a bad idea to say no to a goddess when you cannot run anywhere, but it's mentioned he spends his days weeping on the beach and is aching for his wife.

* ForcedTransformation: Circe turns her victims into various beasts, including wolves and lions, while Odysseus' crewmembers were turned into pigs.

** Odysseus and his remaining crew escape from the Cyclops when Odysseus has a fit of hubris and mocks the injured Cyclops along with revealing his true identity. Sure, the mountaintop that is [[DisproportionateRetribution thrown at the ship]] misses. The [[BoltOfDivineRetribution raging storms]], however, do not.

** Odysseus, heart-breakingly, however, cannot do this to Argos because he must hide who he is.

** Circe [[ForcedTransformation transforms men into animals]] if they displease her. She demands that Odysseus sleep with her in order for her to turn his already-transformed crew back into humans and let them be on their way.

* RandomEventsPlot: Odysseus's actual voyage, which is the most famous part of the story. By contrast, the parts about Ithaca, Telemachus, the suitors, etc., have a normal plotline to them.

** When the souls of the dead suitors arrive in Hades they encounter [[Literature/TheIlliad Achilles and Agamemnon.]]

* OnlyOneAfterlife: Odysseus finds in Hades not only deceased members of his family but also other dead heroes such as Orion and Ajax, showing the belief of those times of mortals ending up there with no distinctions.

* HistoriclDomainCrossover: Odysseus goes to the Underworld and sees mythological villains being punished for their crimes, like the trickster Sisyphus, the husband-murdering daughters of Danaos;, and the cannibalistic Tantalus.

* BrotherSisterIncest: Aoleus' sons are married to their sisters.

* ClassicalCyclops: Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and a sea nymph, a shepherd and a man-eater; his single eye proves his downfall when Odysseus puts it out to save himself and his crew, but he's able to call on his father to curse Odysseus for this.
* ClingyJealousGirl: Odysseus finds that having a nymph wanting to sex you up 24/7 gets old after seven years. Calypso, however, has no intention of letting go, until she's ordered to by Zeus himself.

* {{Determinator}}: Odysseus is deadfast on returning to his homestead no matter what's thrown at him from anyone. He only thinks of giving up once, jumping off his boat during a storm [[ItMakesSenseInContext made by his own men]]. He, of course, doesn't go through with it because how could he tell the story?

* DisproportionateRetribution: Poseidon already had it in for Odysseus (the Sea God favored the Trojans and wasn't happy with Odysseus's [[TrojanHorse horse trick]]) but once Odysseus blinded Poseidon's son, the cyclops Polyphemus, [[PapaWolf the gloves]] came off.
** After slaughtering the suitors, Odysseus and his allies round up any slave girl who slept with any of the suitors while he was away. They then force the slave girls to clear away the bodies of the suitors, before Telemachus hangs them all from one rope.

** Penelope waits twenty years for a husband that's believed to be dead, and never caves to any of the suitors that approach her. Odysseus, on his journey home, ends up in the beds of multiple women, without tarnishing his reputation as a hero. This would already be justified by the societal norms of the time, even assuming either encounter was [[QuestionableConsent consensual]].

** Calypso herself sees a different kind of double standard at work. When Hermes tells her Zeus has ordered her to release Odysseus, [[LampshadeHanging she complains]] that the gods never allow goddesses to enjoy relationships with mortals, citing the examples of Orion and Iasion, lovers of Eos and Demeter respectively, who were killed by gods, yet gods screw around with mortal women all the time. The Olympians having a DoubleStandard is unsurprising. Greek gods had a surprisingly undivine habit of being more erratic, tyrannical, dishonorable, or just plain childish than even most mortals. Socrates noticed that and he wasn't the only one.

* GeniusBruiser: Odysseus. The Greeks wouldn't take no for an answer from him because of his famed intelligence. As for his physical abilities, well, among other things, in Phaecia he hurled a heavy discus much farther than the lighter discuses hurled by the younger men there, and he strung his old bow with ease where the suitors failed, and even Telemachus struggled[[note]]The story itself mentions that Telemachus would eventually have done it had Odysseus not stopped him[[/note]].

* {{Hypocrite}}: The suitors are shown as unwilling to extend SacredHospitality to a simple beggar, even though they've been abusing it themselves for a decade. The fact that this "simple beggar" turns out to be the man who actually owns the house is just the icing on the cake, and further justifies Odysseus's RoaringRampageOfRevenge.

* IWillWaitForYou: Penelope and his dog, although unusual for the trope he does come back, making the trope OlderThanFeudalism.

** Odysseus and his remaining crew escape from the Cyclops when Odysseus has a fit of hubris and mocks the injured cyclops along with revealing his true identity. Sure, the mountaintop that is [[DisproportionateRetribution thrown at the ship]] misses. The [[BoltOfDivineRetribution raging storms]], however, do not.

* NiceToTheWaiter: When Odysseus is in his beggar disguise, this is a very consistent rule: his loyal servants and family treat him kindly, while the suitors and traitors try to kick him out and physically abuse him.

** The suitors in general, when Odysseus reveals himself after having slain Antinous.

* OurGhostsAreDifferent: The shades of Hades, who seems to crave for fresh blood to drink, but are otherwise friendly to our hero.

* PerpetualStorm: Odysseus's ship lands on the island of Thrinacia, where lives the cattle of the sun god, Helios. [[TopGod Zeus]] then causes a storm lasting for forty days, which [[ClosedCircle prevents them from leaving]] the island. After depleting their food stocks, the ship's crew hunts down the cattle, angering the god. When the storm finally ends they leave the island only to have their ship crushed by another of Zeus's storms, which leaves Odysseus (the only one who did not partake of the cattle) as the [[SoleSurvivor sole survivor]].
* PrefersRawMeat: During a NestedStory, Herakles stays the night in a Centaur's home. The Centaur is noted to eat his meat raw, despite being civilized enough to understand SacredHospitality.

** Circe [[ForcedTransformation transforms men into animals]] if they displease her. She demands that Odysseus sleep with her in order for her to turn his already transformed crew back into humans and let them be on their way.

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Odysseus slaughters every suitor and twelve maids in his home once he returns. Subverted though, in that Odysseus spares the kindly herald Medon and the poet Phemius[[note]]heralds and poets being improper for a pious man to harm[[/note]]. Also, he seemingly took a liking to one of the suitors, Amphinomus, and tried to warn him to leave Ithaca; but, as Homer relates, Athena detained him there and Amphinomus ended up killed by Telemachus.

* SurroundedByIdiots: It cannot be overstated just how dumb Odysseus's crew is. From opening the bag of winds to eating Helios' sacred cattle to staying too late sacking a city, the only useful thing they do on the entire trip is row the boat and tie Odysseus to the mast when going past the Sirens.

%%* TheVamp: Circe and Calypso to Odysseus. Also the Sirens. %% Zero Context Example

* HistorysCrimeWave: Odysseus goes to the Underworld and sees mythological villains being punished for their crimes, like the trickster Sisyphus, the husband-murdering daughters of Danaos;, and the cannibalistic Tantalus.

''The Odyssey'' (Greek: ''Ὀδύσσεια'', ''Odýsseia'') is one of the epics of the Literature/TrojanCycle and one of the [[OlderThanFeudalism oldest recorded stories]]. The original was reputedly composed by the blind poet Creator/{{Homer}} and transmitted orally until it was (according to tradition) written down and standardised at the behest of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus in about 550 BCE.

** Finally, a real feast of tropes popular in Italy: in one of the lost epics of the Literature/TrojanCycle, the ''Telegony'', Odysseus fathers a son, [[HeroicBastard Telegonus]], with Circe. When Telegonus comes of age he goes out to seek his father, but when he arrives on Ithaca the two get into a fight without recognizing each other and he unintentionally [[SelfMadeOrphan kills Odysseus]]. When the truth emerges, Circe brings him, Telemachus, and Penelope to her island of Aiaia and grants the latter two immortality. In the end, Circe marries Telemachus, and [[ComfortingTheWidow Penelope marries]] [[OedipusComplex Telegonus]], which results in a TangledFamilyTree. The story was also dramatized by Sophocles in the lost tragedy ''Odysseus Akanthoplex'', with the added detail that an oracle foretells that Odysseus will be killed by his own son, so he banishes Telemachus to another island...[[YouCantFightFate but, of course, the oracle wasn't referring to him]].

* RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic

* BalefulPolymorph: Circe actually turns them into various beasts, including wolves and lions, while the crewmembers were turned into pigs. However, nowadays she's only remembered for the pig thing.

** Circe [[BalefulPolymorph transforms men into animals]] if they displease her. She demands that Odysseus sleep with her in order for her to turn his already transformed crew back into humans and let them be on their way.

* SolitarySorceress: Circe is a famous early example. She lives on an island and [[BalefulPolymorph turns any visitors into pigs]] for her larder.

* AdaptationalHeroism: There were a lot of folk traditions that Penelope were not faithful to Odysseus, with her giving birth to Pan (with the father being Apollo, Hermes or the 108 suitors - yes, she had sex with ''all of them'') and was banished by Odysseus to Mantineia when he returned. The Odyssey chose to remove all of these myths to depict her as a tragic figure.

The poem opens with the gods debating about Odysseus and his son, Telemachus. Odysseus left his infant son and wife, Penelope, for UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar, but after the Fall of Troy he and his crew ended up stranded, and Odysseus had been away from home now for twenty years. Athena heads down to Ithaca to tell the now-20-year-old Telemachus that it's time to man up and find out about his father. See, about three years before these 108 suitors showed up for Penelope and began trying to seduce her, Telemachus was too much of a wimp to do anything. Penelope had managed to keep them at bay using a clever trick--she told them she would marry after she finished weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, but always undid the day's work at night. This kept them fooled for a while, but the plot is eventually discovered. So Telemachus goes and chats with several characters who survived UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar--Menelaus and Nestor--who tell him about his dad and how [[BadassNormal badass]] he is. Unfortunately he neglected to inform Penelope of his departure, and now the suitors are out to murder him too.

First, they end up on an island full of [[LotusEaterMachine Lotus-Eaters]], who entrance the crew and give them [[MushroomSamba a good time,]] so they forget they want to go home. Odysseus drags them back to the ship, and they carry on, only to end up at the island of the Cyclops. Once again, the crew (along with Odysseus) show their wit by eating the food before the Cyclops, Polyphemus, shows up. He is a bit angry, demonstrated by the fact that he bites off the heads of two of the crew. Odysseus tells Polyphemus that his name is "Nobody," then [[EyeScream blinds ol' Poly with a sharpened olive branch]] [[IncendiaryExponent which is on fire]], so that when Polyphemus tries to explain to the other Cyclops what happened, he can only say, "Nobody did this!" Odysseus escapes but, being an idiot, he [[BullyingADragon gloats]], saying, "Cyclops, if anyone ever asks you how you came by your blindness, tell him your eye was put out by Odysseus, sacker of cities, the son of Laërtes, who lives in Ithaca" (9.506). Had the Greeks had social security numbers and public messaging on Internet, he would have thrown those in too.

[[folder:Tropes A-M]]

* BadassNormal: Compared to some of the more well-known Greek heroes, Odysseus is a relatively normal guy. He doesn't have supernatural strength like Heracles, isn't invincible like Achilles, doesn't rely on magic items like Perseus, and isn't directly related to any of the Greek gods.[[note]]Though tradition claims that he's the great-grandson of Hermes.[[/note]] He's just a smart dude in good shape who's just happens to have Athena's favor.
* BalefulPolymorph: Circe actually turns them into various beasts, including wolves and lions, while the crewmembers were turned to pigs. However, nowadays she's only remembered for the pig thing.
* BattleInterruptingShout: Athena does this when the townsfolk gather to revenge the slain suitors against Odysseus. She forces them to stop fighting and make peace.

* BluffTheImpostor: When a stranger walks up to Penelope and claims to be her lost husband Odysseus, Penelope casually asks for Odysseus's bed to be prepared, but outside the bedroom. The stranger, who really ''is'' Odysseus, is dismayed by this, since he had built the bed himself on the stump of an olive tree, making it impossible to move the bed without sawing off the stump (something only he and Penelope knew about, supposedly). As he recounts all the work he put into making it he realizes that she had just been testing him. The funny thing is that he ''expected'' her to test him, and told his son that she would, and he still fell for it.

** After the killing of the suitors, several of the suitors' family members form a mob to seek revenge on Odysseus, led by Antinous' father. They turn to flight quickly after Laertes has killed Antinous' father, and Odysseus at once pursues them with the intent to kill them. But Zeus hurls a lightning bolt at the feet of Athena (who is present in her guise as Mentor); Athena understands that Zeus is warning them that he does not want more bloodshed, and tells Odysseus to let them escape, which he does.

* CentralTheme: Surviving requires cunning, daring and ruthlessness. Even when you have nothing left, you still have your wits and you can find a way to escape any trap, even ones set by the Gods.

* DeathByFallingOver: Of all the tragic or ignominious deaths suffered by Odysseus' crew, the most embarrassing has to go to Elpenor, who got drunk, climbed up on Circe's roof, and then forgot where he was in the morning and fell to his death. Odysseus doesn't even find out what happened to him until he meets his ghost in the underworld.
* {{Determinator}}: Odysseus is deadfast on returning to his homestead no matter what's thrown at him from anyone. He only thinks of giving up once, jumping of his boat during a storm [[ItMakesSenseInContext made by his own men]]. He, of course, doesn't go through with it because how could he tell the story?

* EldritchAbomination: Charybdis; while Scylla has a strange but at least somewhat discernible form, Charybdis' description is ''always'' bizarre and terrifying, waffling between a massive bladder or stomach with flippers that's constantly swallowing and vomiting seawater or a giant, moving, [[ItCanThink sentient]] and ''[[VillainousGlutton hungry]]'' whirlpool.

** Menelaus only in some translations. In the original Greek text he is called ''xanthos'' "blond".

** Also in the underworld, Odysseus to his distress also finds the ghost of Agamemnon, whom he last saw when the Greeks departed from Troy, and asks him how he met his death. Agamemnon reveals that his wife had remarried while he was gone, and her new husband killed him upon returning home.

* GuiltByAssociationGag: Played with in the slaughter of the suitors. Several otherwise good people (Amphinomous especially) were slaughtered with the rest, but a closer examination shows they were just as guilty at breaking ''xenia'' as the rest of them, and were there of their own free will. The [[SoleSurvivor two that were spared]] had valid excuses: the bard Phemius had been forced (more or less at swordpoint) to perform for the suitors, and was ''not'' there of his own free will, and the herald Medon was [[TheMole Penelope's spy]].
* HangingAround: The Odyssey has the oldest recorded example of hanging as a form of execution in the part of the poem in which Odysseus returns home and is met with all of the suitors who have tried to woo his wife in his absence. [[spoiler:He slaughters all of them and then punishes the 12 maids who slept with them, first by forcing them to clear away the suitors' dead bodies, then by [[DisproportionateRetribution hanging them all from one rope]].]]

* HappinessInSlavery: As described in the epic, slaves and masters were not as far apart as in other ages, for instance the swineherd Eumaeus was raised by Odysseus's mother Anticleia almost like a son alongside her daughter Ctimene, and became wealthy enough to buy a slave of his own. And Menelaus makes Megapenthes, his son by a slave, his heir.
** Part of the reason being that you could very well become a slave if your city was conquered of if you were kidnapped. Eumaeus claims he was of royal blood, kidnapped by a Phoenician traders and a Phoenician slave-woman of his parents who made a bid for freedom.

* HowWeGotHere: Everything before Odysseus arrival in the land of the Phaeacians is told in flashback.

* IAmAHumanitarian: Not only Polyphemus, but also the Lestrygonian people, who ate the crewmembers of several of the ships in Odysseus's small fleet. His ship is the only one to escape. There's also Scylla.
** In a roundabout way, so is Circe. Pork was one of the most commonly eaten meats in ancient Greece. So when she turns Odysseus' crew into pigs and starts feeding them acorns, it's clear she was fattening them up to later butcher and eat.

* InMediasRes: Everything before Odysseus arrival in the land of the Phaeacians is told in flashback.

** Irus, an ''actual'' beggar who challenges Odysseus for impinging on his turf. Even Antinous is pleased at [[MuggingTheMonster the result]].

* LiminalBeing: Tiresias manages to hit this trope three ways, because he was both a man and a woman alive; he is a BlindSeer and so can both see more and less than ordinary people; and as a ghost, he's both alive and dead.

* MamasBabyPapasMaybe: Telemachus says that well, his mother tells him he's Odysseus's son. It's more likely, though, that he doesn't doubt whose son he actually is, but whether he's ''worthy'' of being the son of such a great man.
* MeaningfulName: The flashback when Euryclea recognizes Odysseus (known as "Odysseus' Scar" after Erich Auerbach's essay) features an origin for Odysseus' name which means "Child of Pain".

** Odysseus marries queen Callidice of the Thesprotians while Penelope is still alive, is defeated in battle (with Ares fighting on the other side) and succeeded by his and Callidice's son, Polypoetes.
** The suitors' families bring their grievances to the court of Neoptolemus, Achilles's son. He orders Odysseus into exile (because he hopes to gain Odysseus's island Cephallenia). In this version Odysseus ends up marrying the daughter of king Thoas of Aitolia (resultant son: Leontophonus).

** Finally, a real feast of tropes popular in Italy: in one of the lost epics of the Literature/TrojanCycle, the ''Telegony'', Odysseus fathers a son, [[HeroicBastard Telegonus]], with Circe. When Telegonus comes of age he goes out to seek his father, but when he arrives on Ithaca the two get into a fight without recognizing each other and he unintentionally [[SelfMadeOrphan kills Odysseus]]. When the truth emerges, Circe brings him, Telemachus and Penelope to her island of Aiaia, grants the latter two immortality. In the end, Circe marries Telemachus and [[ComfortingTheWidow Penelope marries]] [[OedipusComplex Telegonus]], which results in a TangledFamilyTree. The story was also dramatized by Sophocles in the lost tragedy ''Odysseus Akanthoplex'', with the added detail that an oracle foretells that Odysseus will be killed by his own son, so he banishes Telemachus to another island...[[YouCantFightFate but of course the oracle wasn't referring to him]].

[[folder:Tropes N-Z]]
* NasalTrauma: Odysseus deals with treacherous goatherd Melanthios by cutting off his nose, ears, genitals, hands and feet, in that order. If the bleed-out doesn't kill him, septic infection will.
* NakedFirstImpression: Nausicaa is the only one of the group of maiden who's not afraid of a naked Odysseus after he shipwrecked.

** Odysseus and his remaining crew escape from the cyclops, when Odysseus has a fit of hubris and mocks the injured cyclops along with revealing his true identity. Sure, the mountaintop that is [[DisproportionateRetribution thrown at the ship]] misses. The [[BoltOfDivineRetribution raging storms]], however, do not.

** Then, when the crew is marooned on the isle of Helios, the crew gives into their hunger and slaughter several of the cattle despite being explicitly told not to (at the instigation of the same man who insisted they put ashore for the night when Odysseus wanted to forestall temptation by not landing on the island at all). This results in the ship getting destroyed, all of Odysseus's crew dead, and Odysseus being stranded on the island of Calypso for several years.

* OnlyOneAfterlife: Odysseus finds in Hades not only deceased members of his family but also among others dead heroes as Orion and Ajax, showing the belief of those times of mortals ending up there with no distinctions.

** Athena, goddess of wisdom and intelligent warfare, has a long-standing friendly interest in the resourceful and crafty Odysseus, which she also extends to his son and wise Penelope. She intervenes on many occasions, usually taking the form of various friends, relatives and acquaintances of the three.

* PapaWolf: An UrExample. Odysseus will do anything to return back to his wife and son. And he's willing to face monsters, witches and POSEIDON himself, if he has to.

** Odysseus, heart-breakingly, however cannot do this to Argos because he must hide who he is.

* PerpetualStorm: Odysseus' ship lands on the island of Thrinacia, where lives the cattle of the sun god, Helios. [[TopGod Zeus]] then causes a storm lasting for forty days, which [[ClosedCircle prevents them from leaving]] the island. After depleting their food stocks, the ship's crew hunt down the cattle, angering the god. When the storm finally ends they leave the island only to have their ship crushed by another Zeus' storm, which leaves Odysseus (the only one who did not partake of the cattle) as the [[SoleSurvivor sole survivor]].
* PrefersRawMeat: During a NestedStory, Herakles stays the night in a centaur's home. The centaur is noted to eat his meat raw, despite being civilized enough to understand SacredHospitality.
* {{Pride}}: Odysseus has a really big issue with this. Odysseus does end up taking a very, very long time to get home as a result from it, though his crew arguably suffers more as they end up all dying off, many as a result of his actions.
* PrincessClassic: Nausicaa, personifying an UnbuiltTrope. As the princess of Phaecia, she is the most beautiful girl in the land, outshining her maids as Artemis must outshine her attendants. Odysseus even comments on her beauty when he meets her (although he could be flattering). She quickly proves herself courteous and compassionate, graciously leading Odysseus to her father's palace while always having a mind to her virtuous reputation. She does not, however, win the prince she loves (Odysseus) and live happily ever after... she merely helps Odysseus to his happy ending.
* QuestToTheWest: The end goal of the whole story is to get back home in Greece after leaving Troy.

** Circe [[BalefulPolymorph transforms men into animals]] if they displease her. She demands that Odysseus sleep with her in order for her to turn his already tranformed crew back into humans and let them be on their way.

* RandomEventsPlot: Odysseus's actual voyage, which is the most famous part of the story. By contrast, the parts about Ithaca, Telemachus, the suitors, etc. have a normal plotline to them.

* RapePillageAndBurn: In Samuel Butler's [[SpiceUpTheSubtitles translation]], when describing the adventures and hijinks of his crew after they set sail from Troy (and before arriving at the Cave of the Cyclops), Odysseus casually mentions that he and his crew sacked a town, raped the women and sold survivors into slavery. You know, typical [[SociopathicHero Greek Hero]] stuff.
* RealMenEatMeat: Being out of meat and forced to eat fish is always seen as a bad thing. Scholars have speculated that pre-Classical Greeks may have had some sort of taboo against eating fish, or perhaps the fish in those areas was simply bad. On the other hand, good fishing is mentioned once or twice as a sign of a blessed country.

* RevealingInjury: Or revealing scar. Odysseus' old nurse figures out who he is when she sees his old hunting scar.

* RocksFallEveryoneDies: Helios sics Zeus on your ass, lightning falls, everyone dies.
* RoyalInbreeding: The Phaeacian king Alcinous is married to his brother's daughter Arete. This isn't portrayed as anything unusual for the times, in fact, Alcinous is repeatedly mentioned to love his wife and their children dearly, is TheGoodKing to the Phaeacians, and treats Odysseus generously under the laws of [[SacredHospitality xenia]].

** It's a plot point often overlooked by modern audiences: the main reason that Penelope's suitors had to die was not that they were trying to seduce Penelope, but that they were a bunch of moochers. Overstaying their welcome, eating Penelope out of house and home, and taking advantage of the female servants, they were abusing their privileges under xenia, and thus incurred the wrath of Zeus.

** Polyphemus violates hospitality by eating some of Odysseus' men who have taken refuge in his cave. Odysseus warns him that Zeus will punish him for this, but Polyphemus believes that he's not subject to Zeus because he is a son of Poseidon. It's also worth noting that Odysseus and his men had immediately started stuffing themselves with Polyphemus's cheese and goat's milk stores without thinking as to whose hospitality they themselves were violating. Odysseus actually recognizes that indulging themselves and fleeing is a serious violation of xenia, hence why he insists on waiting for the owner of the cave to return so he could offer a gift of wine as compensation. That is what gets him and his men trapped by Polyphemus.

** Notably, Odysseus ends up having to choose between them ''twice''. First, he's with his crew on a ship, and orders them to pass by Scylla. Scylla (giant tentacled beast) kills six men, but it was better than Charybdis (enormous whirlpool), who would have swallowed up the entire ship. Later on, Odysseus has to pass by them in a raft, and chooses Charybdis this time. Being alone, he's able to cling to a tree near the whirlpool, and makes it back onto the raft after it's swallowed and then expelled.

* SociopathicHero: Odysseus, as Harold Bloom mentions, is a man you don't want to cross or be around too long. He's willing to do nearly anything to survive, including [[RapePillageAndBurn sack towns and villages]], sell people into slavery, lie and manipulate, and in the end, after retaking Ithaca, he brutally murders not only the suitors, but also the palace servant girls in highly brutal ways. Of course, the Greek idea of TheHero is entirely different from the Christian, chivalric and modern conception.

** Only two people survive the slaughter of the suitors: a bard (the suitors had forced him to come along, to entertain them) and the herald Medon ([[KarmicJackpot who had acted as Penelope's spy throughout the story]]).
** Inverted in the last skirmish in the epilogue; only the leader of the mob of suitors' parents (appropriately, [[{{Jerkass}} Antinous]]' father) dies before Athena stops the fighting.

* StrangerSafety: ''Many'' characters take care of main hero Odysseus when they don't know him.

* TellMeAboutMyFather: The first few chapters has Telemachus setting out to Sparta to find out what happen to his dad.

** Many of the other women, for instance when Hermes goes to Calypso in the fifth book, she is weaving; Odysseus encounters Nausicaa when she and her companions have just finished doing the laundry; when Telemachus leaves Sparta, Helen gives him a dress she made herself as a present for his future bride.
* TheresNoPlaceLikeHome: Ithaca to Odysseus. Granted, it is described as rocky and the life he led there was frugal, but that's where he wants to return to and so he rejects offers to stay in more pleasant and richer places.

* TooAwesomeToUse: Odysseus' bow, which is so valuable he didn't bring it to the ''Trojan War'' where it would certainly have been extremely useful.
* TragicIntangibility: Odysseus attempts to hug his mother's ghost not once, but three times in Book XI, only to pass through her and be left with his sorrow.
* TricksterGirlfriend: [[ProperLady Penelope]], of all characters. She is revealed to be pretty sharp herself (Odysseus must have married her for a reason) as she keeps the suitors under her thumb with various tricks...and then she plays a mind game with her husband, the King of Tricksters when he shows up in disguise, ordering a slave to drag Odysseus's bed from their chamber -causing Odysseus to demand who dared to cut the bed from the living olive tree he carved it from. It's something only the two of them knew, thus tricking him into proving his identity while she proved her fidelity to him in a single move.

** Any of the loyal people in Odysseus's household. His swineherd, cowherd and Penelope are all pointed out as being exceptional in their devotion to him after many decades.

** When upbraiding Antinous for trying to kill her son, Penelope points out that Antinous's father took refuge with Odysseus to escape retaliation for his piracy. Antinous's father later launches a rebellion over his son's death, and is the only one to be killed before Athena forcibly settles everything.

* UnwantedHarem: Dozens of foreign nobles seek Penelope's hand in marriage after her husband is presumed dead. He returns and kills them all. It's fair to say that he not only kills them for being pretenders, but also because, for 20 years they mooched from Ulysses' estate and fortune.\\

* WaitForYourDate: Penelope, acting regent of Ithaca as the wife of Odysseus, kept a bevy of suitors housed and fed in a reception hall while waiting at least nine years for her husband to return home from the Trojan War. Almost all of these suitors were opportunists, social climbers, wannabes or straight-up mooches, leeching off the Ithaca treasury. Greek custom of the time forbade Penelope from shooing them away, as that would be an affront to Zeus, however she also remained circumspectly distant from them, allowing only servants to content them.

* WhoWantsToLiveForever: While most,such as the gods, [[LivingForeverIsAwesome definitely disagree with this sentiment]] Odysseus himself rejects Calypso's offer of immortality while being trapped on an island in order to remain free and to return to his wife and family.

* YouWakeUpOnABeach: Odysseus wakes up naked on a beach in the end of book 5 (shortly after the protagonist is introduced: the first four books focus on Telemachus). He is found by Nausicaa and her maids.

** Polyphemus violates hospitality by eating some of Odysseus' men who have taken refuge in his cave. Odysseus warns him that Zeus will punish him for this, but Polyphemus believes that he's not subject to Zeus because he is a son of Poseidon. It's also worth noting that Odysseus and his men had immediately started stuffing themselves with Polyphemus's cheese and goat's milk stores without thinking as to whose hospitality they themselves were violating.

Meanwhile, Odysseus is stuck on Calypso's island, crying on a rock because he misses his family. Hermes shows up and tells Calypso to let him go, and she does. Poseidon shows up again and shipwrecks Odysseus, but he manages to swim ashore and is aided by the princess of the Phaeacians, Nausicaa[[labelnote:*]]who would one day [[Manga/NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind inspire]] Creator/HayaoMiyazaki with her pluckiness[[/labelnote]]. He ends up chilling with the Phaeacians and recounts to them what he's been doing since the Fall of Troy ten years ago.

* RedShirt: Every single time Odysseus lands on an island, at least a few members of his crew have to die to show that the journey is dangerous. Some get eaten by the Cyclops, others by the Lestrygonians, and one, seemingly unable to find another way to die, ''falls off a roof[[labelnote:*]]so that Odysseus can meet him again when he visits Hades on his next stop[[/labelnote]].''

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Odysseus slaughters every suitor and twelve maids in his home once he returns. Subverted though, in that Odysseus spares the kindly herald Medon and the poet Phemius[[labelnote:*]]heralds and poets being improper for a pious man to harm[[/labelnote]]. Also, he seemingly took a liking to one of the suitors, Amphinomus, and tried to warn him to leave Ithaca; but, as Homer relates, Athena detained him there and Amphinomus ended up killed by Telemachus.

* StatuesqueStunner: The princess of the Laestrygonians, the cannibalistic giants; she's strong, good-looking, and impiled to be ''young'' as her mother and father are way bigger than she is.

* AccidentalAdultery: {{Averted}}; presumed-widow Penelope has no shortage of suitors-- some [[YouHaveWaitedLongEnough quite forceful]]-- while presumed-dead Odysseus is LostAtSea, but she stays faithful for ten years. More faithful than Odysseus himself, for that matter, although "[[QuestionableConsent he never gave consent in his heart]]."

* {{Animated Adaptation}}: A classic example- Anime/{{Ulysses 31}} Is (sort of) The Odyssey IN SPACE!

* GateGuardians: Scylla and Charybdis guard the passage through the Straits of Messina.

** After being given a magical bag of wind from King Aeolus, Odysseus's crew is convinced that it contains gold and open the bag, releasing the winds that send them right back to Aeolus's kingdom. To add insult to injury, they were right off the shores of Ithaca.