Odysseus is a comic hero:
- It's Odysseus's fault he doesn't go straight home, because he just HAS to tell Polyphemus his name
- After he ends the war by hiding in a fake horse
- After he tries to duck the draft by pretending to be insane
- Circe turns his men into pigs
- He's captured by a nymph, Calypso, who keeps him as her boy toy. For, like, 7 years.
- When he gets to Ithaca, he lies his head off to the first person he meets, a shepherd boy, telling him a cockamamie story about having been kidnapped by pirates...
- ...the boy turns out to be Athena in drag.
- When he gets home, he doesn't tell anyone who he is, not even his wife, Penelope, who he tells that he "saw" Odysseus, in Egypt or something
- Even after he kills all the suitors, Penelope still tries to trick him by asking him to move their bed, to his great irritation, because it's impossible
- His final task is to appease Poseidon by carrying an oar inland so far that people have no idea what an oar is.
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