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What are the roles of monsters in The Odyssey?
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In The Odyssey , female monsters are dangerous, out of bounds, and often deceptive. Penelope is a symbol of how women can be good and obedient when they have to be, while the monstrous females in the text symbolize the danger of letting women have too much power. Part Two: What are the names of Odysseus's crew members? Describe each crew member's role on the ship.It is notable that so many of the monsters Odysseus faces are female: Scylla, the six-headed monster that eats men, is characterized as female; Charybdis, a whirlpool, is also somehow female; and the sirens, monsters that lure men to wreck their ships on the rocks, are also characterized as at least half female (not to mention Calypso and Circe, also females, though not monsters). It seems, then, as though monstrous women, women who are powerful or deceptive or dangerous, are represented as extreme threats. These female monsters are out of bounds; they operate outside the realm of what is acceptable female behavior.
Notice that Penelope is often referenced with the epithet "heedful" ahead of her name; this identifies what is probably her most important and valued quality: her obedience. She is extremely loyal to her husband, Odysseus, even after his twenty-year absence in which she's had no news of him....
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Everyone else believes he is dead, but she continues to heed him, and what she believes he would want. Odysseus, when he returns, is most concerned about whether or not she has remained loyal to him. Therefore, the female monsters seem to serve as a sort of counterpoint to Penelope. While she is loyal and obedient to her husband, qualities that excuse her deception of the exploitative and violent suitors, the female monsters are threatening, a symbol of how dangerous the ancient Greeks believed women could be when their behavior goes unchecked.
In a general sense, the various monsters confronted in the Odyssey serve as tests of Odysseus's cunning and resolve. Each one presents a unique type of obstacle to the adventurer, tempting or testing Odysseus in a different way, and they can each be understood to represent eternal human challenges, fears, and conflicts. Scylla and Charybdis, for instance, have become bywords for any choice between two equally destructive alternatives or extremes; they are literature's archetypal "rock and a hard place" or "no-win situation." The sirens and the sea nymph Calypso each embody variations of temptation; the sirens embody the false, cold allure of all things alien and malevolent; their beauty and song beckon Odysseus to surrender to the unknowable depths of the sea, as the worm beckons the fish.
Calypso, on the other hand, can be seen as the true and perfect temptation, the promise of arcane and eternal bliss which threatens to sway him from his course and from his human, temporal devotion to his wife, son, and kingdom. Calypso dramatizes the conflict of those qualities in us that desire struggle, discovery, change, and fulfillment, against those that desire ease, release, and inertia. In a sense, she offers the choice between the humane and the divine. The island of the lotus-eaters poses a similar kind of choice, between the striving and incertitude of reality and the addictive pleasures of opiate-induced slumber.
Of all the Odyssey's monsters, the cyclops Polyphemus is the hero's most direct and active antagonist, and he serves as an avatar of ruthlessness, barbarism, and destructive appetites. In these respects he becomes a sort of monstrous mirror of the suitors in Odysseus's palace. His role is primarily to test Odysseus's cunning, and to present a warped vision of the Odyssey's recurring theme of hospitality; like Circe, he is a predatory host, devouring Odysseus's men and violating sacred taboos which mandate generosity to one's guests--a theme which comes full circle when Odysseus slaughters the suitors in his own home, disguising his identity to fool them much as he did with Polyphemus.
Speaking broadly, the monsters Odysseus faces in his journey constitute a kind of gauntlet or series of trials, probing for specific weaknesses in his character. The fact that he prevails, alone among all his men, is an indication of the exceptional qualities that make him and epic hero and an exemplar of certain human limits.