Odysseus: An Archetypal Hero In Homer's The Odyssey

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Many poems, books, songs, and movies contain popular archetypes. Hence, an archetype is a repetition of characters, situations, and plots. Furthermore, Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey has many different archetypes, such as heroes, villains, and the innocent.
An example of an archetypal hero in The Odyssey is Odysseus. Homer portrays Odysseus as intelligent when Odysseus states, “But I saw through this and answered with a quick lie” (Applebee et al. 902). Here, Odysseus determines the Cyclop’s is seeking to do and counters the Cyclops’s hoax with his own deception. Therefore, Odysseus is an archetypal hero because he displays hero-like qualities that repeat throughout many stories. In Homer’s The Odyssey, an archetypal villain is the Cyclops.

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