Odysseus Use Of Disguise In Homer's Odyssey

Have you been successfully to disguises your identity to survive in a dangerous situation, to achieve a goal, or to test who can trust? You probably have not. In “the Odyssey”, Odysseus survived in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus as he claimed to be called Noman. Athena disguised herself as a shepherd to achieve the goal of helping Odysseus defeat the suitors. Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, disguised himself as a beggar to find out who he could trust. These are some examples of how disguise has been used to help Odysseus get back home safe and help him get rid of the suitors.

One example of how disguise helped Odysseus was when he and his crew went to the island of the Cyclops. Odysseus chose some men to go to the cave of Polyphemus with

him because he wanted to get the stranger’s gift from the men of the island. Instead of bringing goods and riches back to the ship, his men were brutally slaughtered. To get out of their dilemma, Odysseus gave the Cyclops some of the wine that he had received from Maron Euanthides. After giving the Cyclops three cups of the wine, Odysseus says “Cyclops, do you ask me my name? … Noman is my name; Noman is what mother and father call me and all my friends”(Homer 107). When Odysseus confronted to the Cyclops, he used a name to disguise himself. It showed how clever Odysseus was in just disguising his name. He knew that the Cyclops would call for help saying that Noman blinded the Cyclops when the other Cyclops asked what happend. Afterwards, Polyphemus said “Noman should be last eaten of his company, and all the others shall be eaten before him! This shall be your stranger's gift” and he fell asleep because of the wine. Polyphemus was “...easily convinced that Odysseus' name is "Nobody," leading to confusion when Polyphemus later tells his fellow giants that Nobody is harming him”(cliffnotes). Odysseus knew that the cyclops were not that sophisticated, so he used a name as a disguise to help him and his crew escape the Cyclops cave.
After Odysseus told the Phaiacian about his journey, he left Phaiacia and arrived home.

Instead of waking up to the view of his hometown, he woke up to the view of a misty area created by Athena. Athena wanted to do this because she wanted to tell Odysseus “...everything first and disguise him. She (Athena)wished that…might not know him until he had punished the wooers of his wife for their outrageous violence”(Homer 152). This is the plan of Athena, for Odysseus to take revenge for all the things the suitors had done. To do this, Athena created mist to confuse Odysseus and she used this strategy to be able to talk to Odysseus. This mist can be described as a disguise that is used to make Ithaca looked like a different place. While Odysseus was contemplating about where he was, how trusty the Phoenicians were, and counting the goods that he had gotten, Athena came walking towards him. She did so “... in the shape of a young shepherd, but someone who seemed to be delicately nurtured, like a gentlemen's son:...”(152). Athena disguised herself as a shepherd because “If Athena did not have the disguise as the shepherd boy when telling Odysseus that he was back in his homeland, Odysseus might have thought it was another trick from the Gods but because of Athena’s specific disguise he trusted and believed that what the “young shepherd boy” said was the truth”(“oconnorodyssey”). After she reviewed herself to Odysseus, she told Odysseus a plan to defeat the suitors using disguise

as a strategy. Athena disguises Odysseus to be a beggar was helpful because“...when Athena disguises Odysseus into an old man, it allows him to enter the palace past the suitors”(Carly Kwait).
At this point, Odysseus looked like a beggar who was old and ragged.

He used the disguise to learn about what has been going on the in past 20 years while he had been gone. In knowing who he could trust, he could make plans to attack the suitors. First, Odysseus the beggar, went to the swineherd Eumaeus and learned more about the suitors, Eumaeus and his story. Odysseus found out that Eumaeus was still loyal to him. When Odysseus the beggar tells Eumaeus that Odysseus is about to come home, “Eumaeus doesn’t want to get his hopes up, and in his weariness, it’s clear that his love and regard for his king is undiminished after all these tears.”(enotes). The reason Eumaeus acts like this is because he had been tricked before by Aitolian. Aitolian came to Eumaeus because he had killed somebody and was now traveling around the world. He went to Eumaeus and told him that he had seen Odysseus in Crete and that he would come back either that summer or in autumn (Homer 165-166) but Odysseus never came. Later in the story, with the help of Telemachus, Odysseus used his disguise to get into his own house and to learn more about the different suitors. After a night at his own house, Penelope asked Odysseus to go meet her. After they had a talk, Penelope asked the old nurse Eurycleia to wash Odysseus. When Eurycleia, the old nurse, was washing Odysseus, she noticed the scar on his leg and said “surely tha’rt my baby! And I never knew thee till I had felt my master all over!”(Homer 222).

Odysseus told the nurse to shut up and not tell anyone that he had come back and she replied with “...when tha’st downed those lordly marry-me-quicks, I’ll tell thee over all women in the house, which of ‘em besmirch’ee and which are innocent”(223). What the nurse says shows that the nurse would help Odysseus out in the riddance of the suitors and the bad maids. Odysseus would only be able to plan his attack on the suitors because of the beggar disguise that was graciously given to him by Athena, and this example also shows how disguise helps out Odysseus in his quest to get home.
In conclusion, using disguise to solve problems is one of the theme in ‘the Odyssey”. It helped Odysseus to escape and get home. From Odysseus facing the cyclops Polyphemus, to Athena helping Odysseus get revenge on the suitors, and the disguise that Athena gave to Odysseus to get revenge showed how disguise can be used in many ways.