Blog 3 Response

In the Odyssey, trickery is juxtaposed almost to the point of polar opposition when it is applied to those with Odysseys and against Odysseus. Odysseus is revered as the greatest trickster of them all. He is the man who came up with the brilliant ruse of the Trojan horse, and the man who deceived the Cyclops. When he escapes from the Cyclops' lair, the beast screams "Nohbdy's tricked me!" (157); this deception spared Odysseus and his men from the other Cyclops, thus casting trickery as a tactic of the hero, an element of the greatest mind of war. Without his guile, our hero would be dead. Even the gods admire his artfulness: Athena refers to him as the "master mind of war" (3), and Zeus says "there is no mortal half so wise" (3). Odysseus relies on trickery over and over to save himself, culminating in the end when he constructs a lie to his swineherd that lasts for days, and he shows himself as a beggar to his wife and the suitors. Because these cons eventually lead to the massacre of the cowardly suitors, Odysseus' ruse is a  moment of godly insight, and because of his character and reputation, people pay homage to his great intellect.  Penelope herself uses trickery when she tells the suitors that she will marry when she finishes weaving her shroud, and unweaves it at night. Again, this is somehow noble because it aids the cause of the hero. Athena disguises herself as Mentor and many other figures to help both Telemakhos and Odysseus, emphasizing that the gods are with Odysseus in his trickery.

For those not among Odysseus' helpers in the epic, trickery is shown more negatively. The Sirens use their song with no other purpose than to lead sailors to their dooms. Circe turns Odysseus' lustful crewmen into swine. Agamemnon is killed by his own wife, and Helen tells the story of how she imitated the Greeks' wives' voices when they were in the horse outside the walls of Troy. This is evil trickery, and evil in the context of the epic because it works against the hero. Thus I think that trickery is not exclusively associated with or portrayed in any one way relating to gender. Instead, the Odyssey shows that deception is a double-edged sword: it comes to Odysseus' rescue at times and brings tragedy at others.