Odysseus And Marlin As An Epic Hero In Homer's The Odyssey

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Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey is about an epic hero named Odysseus who goes through various obstacles to reunite with his long lost family. In a like manner Marlin the Clownfish from Disney’s Finding Nemo travels across the ocean to rescue his son who is kidnapped with the help of a variety of companions. People consider both Odysseus and Marlin the contemporary models of an epic hero who travels to reunite with family. To be an epic hero one has to be brave, clever, and a leader. Although both characters are considered to be epic heroes, Marlin the protagonist from Disney’s animated movie, Finding Nemo is an inferior epic hero to Odysseus from The Odyssey by Homer because Odysseus is braver, more clever, and a better leader. Throughout …show more content…

In several events Odysseus uses his cleverness to escape undesired situations while Marlin tends to get injured when those times arose proving Odysseus more clever than Marlin. In one of Odysseus’s crisis Odysseus and his crew are stuck in a cyclops’s cave and they have to fool the cyclops to get out of the cave. In Adventures of Reading Odysseus tricks the cyclops into thinking Odysseus’s name is Nohbdy and eventually gets out of the cave with the cyclops screaming “Nohbdy, Nohbdy’s tricked me, Nohbdy’s ruined me!” (498). This statement gives a clear example of how Odysseus is more clever than the regular person by manipulating the outcome of this event. With Odysseus’s clever plan, Odysseus and most of his crew got out safely. In addition to the cyclops crisis, Odysseus runs into another crisis where he has to use his cleverness to overcome the obstacle. Odysseus’s ship is stuck between Scylla and Charybdis in a narrow waterway and he has to pick to go closer to one of the two. Odysseus uses his wits and choses Scylla because six people devoured is better than everyone dieing to Charybdis. In Adventures of Reading, Odysseus uses his cleverness once more and states “But as I sent them towards Scylla, I told them nothing, as they could do nothing” (510). With his quick thinking this idea single handedly saves everyone but six people, as if he told them they would panic and cease rowing then everyone would be eaten. Odysseus proves he is clever time and time again by saving his crew through brilliant ideas. Rather than being clever Marlin showed vacuousness in facing dangers. In Finding Nemo, Marlin and his companion accidentally swim right into a jellyfish field. In the scene in Finding Nemo, Marlin states “We’re gonna race. First one out of the jellyfish wins”. This one statement from Marlin causes both Marlin and his companion to be put into a

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