Polyphemus Character Analysis

Polyphemus is the Cyclops that Odysseus meets on his journey home from Troy. Odysseus goes into Polyphemus’s cave out of greed—he wants to get the cyclops’s treasure—but Polyphemus traps them and then begins eating Odysseus’s men. Odysseus tricks the monster, blinds him, and then escapes with his crew. Just as Odysseus and his men get back to their ship, he calls back to Polyphemus, telling the Cyclops his name so that he can get credit for his cleverness. Now armed with Odysseus’s name, Polyphemus then tells his father, Poseidon, to punish Odysseus. Poseidon punishes him by making his journey home extremely difficult. All of Odysseus’s men die on the journey back to Ithaca, so it could be said that Odysseus’s vanity is responsible for their deaths. This not only illustrates Odysseus as a selfish and narcissistic man, but it also shows how the gods do not care whose lives they destroy when they try to teach someone a lesson.