TOO MUCH INFORMATION

[serizawa3000]

 

I didn't actually read The Odyssey in its entirety until maybe a couple few years ago, though I was familiar with the storyline. (Also I went and read The Iliad first, but anyway).
In my college days, I did up a paper linking Odysseus to another well-known literary sailor who had a series of misadventures: Sindbad. (Or Sinbad). His voyages are included in most translations of the Arabian Nights stories... and in certain films featuring visual effects by the inimitable Ray Harryhausen (who admittedly played a little fast and loose with the stories*, though the reason I wrote the paper had a little something to do with a bit that I noticed in one of Sinbad's voyages... and doubtless Ray noticed this also.)

One of the big set pieces in The Odyssey is the visit to the land of the Cyclopes. Odysseus, full of guile, hubris, and curiosity, wants to check out the dark, dark cave of one particular one-eyed giant. Polyphemus demonstrates his particular brand of inhospitality by eating a couple of Odysseus's men for dinner. Then two more in the morning, two more in the evening. Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk on wine, then he and his men poke out the sleeping giant's single eye with a wooden spike they heated in the fire beforehand. "NOBODY'S TRICKED ME!", the bit with the sheep, Odysseus can't keep his hubris shut and doesn't get to go home for ten years.

A few hundred years later, an aged Sindbad the Sailor is telling Sindbad the Porter (it's complicated, but that's why he's not merely Sindbad, but Sindbad the Sailor. The stand-up comic and actor didn't come along until a few hundred years after that) about one of his voyages where he (no captain of the ship himself, but simply a merchant on a trade vessel) wind up on an island where their ship is promptly stolen. In some versions of the story, anyway. In any case, they're stranded. And then they have a run-in with an ogre who kills and eats the captain for dinner. Like the witch from Hansel and Gretel (wait, what?), the ogre goes for the fat ones first. Sindbad is lucky in that he's a touch skinny, since for all his being a merchant (and, eventually, captain of his own ship), business hasn't been all that good to him (That's why there are SEVEN voyages of Sindbad. Unlike Odysseus, Sindbad is able to get home after each misadventure.). Sindbad and the surviving men somehow build a raft and then blind the sleeping ogre with his own roasting skewers, but just as they're able to get to sea, the ogre calls up some of his friends who fling boulders, and because they can see, they're able to hit the raft, until only Sindbad is left.

And then of course, that one Harryhausen Cyclops gets a torch in the eye for his troubles and stumbles off a cliff to his death.

I did not mention Ray Harryhausen in my paper, but anyway. I kinda wonder where he cribbed from. Because while there are similarities between Polyphemus and Sindbad's ogre (in some versions of the story, he only has one eye, even), there are differences also: notably how the Cyclops gulps down human flesh raw, but Sindbad's ogre cooks his victims first... roasting them on spits.

The "visit to the land of a man-eating monster" is the only place where The Odyssey and Sindbad's voyages overlap. If memory serves, my compare and contrast stuff pertained to Odysseus and Sindbad... my professor remarked that Odysseus would have raided Sindbad's ship if he'd had the opportunity. Odysseus may be a king, and one of the rare Greek heroes who is not the offspring of a god, but he's also a warrior and a pirate. And for all his cunning, he's got a lot of hubris.
Sindbad starts out a little green at first. A merchant who keeps running into disaster (that island is no island but a really big fish... or maybe a sea turtle), but is able to make his way home through his wits. Eventually he becomes captain of his own ship, but, again, disaster strikes, and he goes home perhaps older, wiser, richer, and finally retires from the sailor's life.

There you go.

Wasn't there a film version of The Odyssey with Kirk Douglas in the title role?

*Sindbad only ever went on seven voyages. Birds of prey big enough to carry off elephants were involved. And, well, yes, the parallels between Polyphemus and the nameless ogre.
Of course, this isn't the only time Ray Harryhausen played fast and loose with the original source material, but hey, Ray Harryhausen visual effects. Jason fights a Hydra before claiming the Golden Fleece (and since he knows Hercules and the trouble Herc had with his own Hydra, Jason bypasses the whole business of severing heads and just stabs the Hydra in the vital spot, because Medea putting it to sleep with her magic probably wouldn't have been as much fun. Plus CLIMACTIC SKELETON FIGHT.). Perseus faces off against the Kraken, a sea monster from Scandanavian folklore given a Greek makeover. In lieu of winged sandals, Perseus gets to ride Pegasus, who was originally tamed by Bellerophon. In the original story, Perseus just used his sword to kill the sea monster, who was called Cetus, if memory serves. He kept Medusa's head in his carryall bag, because getting Medusa's head was his original quest... this business with Andromeda and the sea monster was a sidequest, as it were...