Conidi+Significant+Passage

"...My great eye lost, and at Odysseus' hands. Always I had in mind some giant, armed in giant force, would come against me here. But this, but you---small, pitiful, and twiggy---you put me down with wine, you blinded me. Come back, Odysseus, and I'll treat you well, praying the god of earthquake to befriend youhis son I am, for he by his avowal fathered me, and, if he will, he may heal me of this black wound  ---he and no other of all the happy gods of mortal men." Few words I shouted in reply to him: "If i could take your life i would and take your time away, and hurl you down to hell! The god of earthquake could not heal you there!" At this he stretched his hands out into the darkness toward the sky of stars, and prayed Poseidon: 'O hear me, lord, blue girdler of the islands, if i am thine indeed, and thou art father: grant that Odysseus, raider of cities, never see his home: Laertes' son, I mean, who kept his hall on Ithaca. Should destiny intend that he shall see his roof again among his family in his fatherland, far be that day, and dark the years between. Let him lose all companions, and return under strange sail to bitter days at home..."

The significance of this quote is that this sets off the main chain of events that make up the Odyssey. Poseidon answers this prayer. It takes Odysseus over 20 years to get back to Ithaca. When he does, he finds out how terrible things have been since he'd left. Suitors had been trying to claim his wife, and in the meanwhile they had been living of his land, drinking his wine, and eating his food. Along the way, Odysseus friends and crew were slowly killed off, and by the end of his trip, he was the sole survivor on his boat. If this would not have happened, if Polyphemus had not cursed Odysseus, the veterans of the Trojan War would've returned home safely. Odysseus would've been able to parent his son, and he would've been able to spend many more years with his dog Argos, and would've been able to enjoy his life with his wife Penelope while they were young. All these oppurtunities were taken away from him, along with the lives of his friends and fellow soldiers, all because of that curse.



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