'Fate versus Destiny' in the Odyssey and the Iliad

The Odyssey

The Power of Cunning over Strength

If the Iliad is about strength, the Odyssey is about cunning, a distinction that becomes clear-cut in the very first lines of the epics. Whereas the Iliad notifies the article of the storm of Achilles, the strongest champion in the Greek army, the Odyssey focuses on a “man of rotates and turns”. Odysseus does have extraordinary strength, as he demonstrates in Book 21 by being the only man who can string the bow. But he relies much more on brain than sinew, an inclination that his comes across showcase.

He understands that he will not overpower Polyphemus, for example, and that, even if he were adept to manage so, he wouldn't be adept to budge the boulder from the door. He therefore designs round his disadvantage in strength by exploiting Po1yphemus's stupidity. Though he does use violence to stifle Polyphemus's single eye, this display of strength is part of a bigger design to deceive the brute. (Monro 12)

Similarly, Odysseus understands that he is no match for the owner of strapping juvenile suitors in his castle, so he makes the most of his other strength—his wits. Step by step, through disguises and deceptions, he plans a situation in which he solely is armed and the suitors are locked in a room with him. With this setup, Achilles' superb talents as a warrior would endow him to accomplish what Odysseus does, but only Odysseus's strategic planning can bring about such a certain victory. Some of the checks in Odysseus's long, wandering ordeal appear to mock reliance on strength alone.

No one can oppose the Sirens' recital, for example, but Odysseus gets an earful of the lovely melody by having his crew bind him up. Scylla and Charybdis will not be struck, but Odysseus can minimize his deficiency with careful decision-making and very careful navigation. Odysseus's meet with Achilles in the underworld is a reminder: Achilles won large kleos, or glory, during his life, but that life was short and completed violently. Odysseus, on the other hand, by virtue of his wits, will live to a ripe vintage age and is destined to pass away in peace. (Jones 45)

The Pitfalls of Temptation

The primary proceed that frustrated so many Achaeans' homecoming was the work of an Achaean himself: Ajax (the “Lesser” Ajax, a somewhat unimportant figure not to be confused with the “Greater” Ajax, who Odysseus encounters in Hades) raped the Trojan priestess Cassandra in a temple while the Greeks were plundering the dropped city. That proceed of impulse, impiety, and stupidity conveyed the anger of Athena upon the Achaean fleet and set in motion the string of connections of happenings that turned Odysseus's homecoming into a long nightmare.

It is fit that the Odyssey is motivated by such a happening, for many of the pitfalls that Odysseus and his men face are likewise obstacles that originate out of mortal flaw and the inability to control it. The submission to ...