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Christie Davis

Mrs. Joyce

English I Honors

6 April 2020

The Odyssey: Penelope and Odysseus

The characters of Penelope and Odysseus are similar in that they use intelligent and

cunning methods to resolve the various conflicts they encounter instead of relying on physical

strength alone. The Odyssey was codified by Homer and the end of the Greek Dark Ages and

would go on to become a literary classic of the ancient world. The epic follows the story of the

hero Odysseus as he attempts to find his way home to Ithaca and into the arms of his wife,

Penelope. While embarking on his journey, Odysseus and his men come to the land of the

Cyclops, giants with one eye in the middle of their forehead. The crew finds themselves in the

Cyclops Polyphemus’ cave, trapped by the large stone covering the entrance. Odysseus gets him

drunk and reveals his name to be “Nohbdy”. This way, when Odysseus and his men later drive a

red-hot staff through the beasts eye, blinding him, Polyphemus will cry out “Nohbdy’s killing

me!” (Homer 564-576). Odysseus could not correct this situation with only physical strength

since the large stone could not be rolled away. Instead, Odysseus had to use his wit in order to

save he and his men’s lives. In telling the Cyclops his name was Nohbdy, he allowed the crew to

escape while remaining safe from the neighboring cyclops. As a woman, Penelope may not have

had the same dangerous encounters that Odysseus had, but the queen still had to use intellect in

order to absolve her problems. Penelope’s palace has been swarmed by suitors seeking her hand

in marriage and she has come to a point where she can no longer stall an engagement. She asks

her suitors to allow her to finish her weaving before she marries and uses their permission to buy
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more time: “So everyday I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight I unwove it;

and so for three years, I deceived the Achaeans” (Homer 606). Penelope could not get rid of the

suitors using her own physical strength since she was a woman who was far too outnumbered.

Like Odysseus, Penelope also had to use her intellect avoid her marriage to the suitors. In

Penelope undoing her weaving each night, she ensured that she would never complete it,

delaying her marriage. Her three years of stalling gave Odysseus enough time to return home and

purge his home of the suitors once and for all. It is clear that Odysseus and Penelope are alike in

that they both use guile as opposed to brute force to solve their problems, showing their

compatibility as a couple and demonstrating that intellect was a culturally valued trait by the

Greeks.
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Works Cited

Homer. “Excerpts from the Odyssey” Trans. Fitzgerald, Robert. MyPerspectives English

Language Arts Grade 9 Volume One: Pearson Education Inc. or its affiliates, 2017, pgs.

564-576, 606.