The Pivotal Scene: Narration, Colonial Focalization, and Transition in Odyssey 9

Abstract

This article studies the Cyclops' scene in the ninth book of the Odyssey in order to demonstrate how the hero's confrontation with the new world and its new rules reflects a fundamental conflict between the values of the heroic age and those of the post-war era. Applying the narratological tools of narration and focalization, the article delineates the hero's convoluted progress toward adaptation to a new reality where formerly privileged values must be replaced. What makes this path especially arduous is the repeated thwarting of all attempts to establish dominance through colonization. The complex nexus of contrasting values culminates in the epic's eponymous hero relinquishing his acquisitive colonialism and drastically modifying his heroic values, thus elevating the humane values of self-restraint and rational conduct based on self-sufficiency to a plane above martial heroism.