The Importance of the Cloak in Homer’s Odyssey

The Importance of the Cloak in Homer’s Odyssey

Near the end of the fourteenth chapter of Homer's Odyssey, the main character, Odysseus, announces that he is about to tell a story to his swineherd, Eumaeus, and several other workers inside the swineherd's hut. Odysseus warns the men that his story is the result of his drinking with them, but the story is actually a test of his swineherd's character. Disguised as Castor's son, a rag-wearing beggar with no possessions, he tells the men a story about fighting alongside the man who, secretly, he really is. Homer emphasizes Odysseus' great mind when he acts the part to its entirety even when his own story is twisted to today's reader. In the tale, his fellow soldier at Troy, Odysseus, is able to manipulate another soldier into taking a request for reinforcements so that Castor's son can sleep under the departing messenger's cloak.

Both in his story and within the hut, Odysseus is the manipulative character, and the ultimate outcome of both is the temporary use of a cloak for Castor's son to sleep under. Knowing the limited resources of the swineherd and his own abundance of cloaks at home, Odysseus frames his story so that the swineherd would consider lending his guest the use of a cloak rather than telling a tale with a moral of being generous and gift giving. The swineherd is able to show his guest hospitality yet face no loss by the lending of a cloak. This insight shows the maturity and development that Odysseus has experienced along his journey home; a younger and less experienced Odysseus may not have considered the importance of the difference between lending and giving when the host is a man he employs.

For twenty years Odysseus was away from his home of Ithaca, and in this time he faced several events that would change the way he would see the world. Witnessing such events as the breaking open of six of his innocent soldiers' skulls by a Cyclops (Homer 132) and the feeding of another six of his men to a six-headed beast (Homer 186) played a large part of the changed man that returned. Though a changed Odysseus awoke on the beach of Ithaca, he would have to force all the lessons of two decades out of his personality and into the efforts to regain his life; he would need to use the strength he gained from his experiences to conceal his identity behind a mask of weakness.