A Guide to All the Monsters in The Odyssey

4 min readThe hungriest monster in The Odyssey is not a six-limbed sailor snatcher, a one-eyed man-eating giant, or a witch who can turn men into pigs. It is one man's hubris. The real monster is inside Odysseus. Far more men die at the hands of his worst-laid plans than in the jaws of any one monster they meet along the way.That said, the man encounters quite a few scares along the way, from the mighty Laestrygonians to the sirens wooing him from the beach. At times in Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation of The Odyssey, the monsters arrive in such quick succession that it’s almost hard to keep up with all the bloodshed.So, you came here for monsters, and monsters are what you'll get. Here's a who's who of the various creatures, impossibly large individuals, and seductive nymphs we meet—in order—in The Odyssey.Universal Pictures..PolyphemusPolyphemus is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea. He traps Odysseus and his men inside his cave and eats several of them. The survivors blind him with a sharpened stake and escape by concealing themselves among his flock of sheep.Nolan omits much of the trickery traditionally associated with the encounter—they get him drunk first, and Odysseus tells him his name is "nobody" so when they flee, Polyphemus tells his giant pals that "nobody" blinded him, allowing them to escape. None of that good stuff is in the film; instead, Polyphemus is a lumbering, nearly wordless idiot.Anyway, Polyphemus prays to Poseidon after being blinded, while Odysseus makes the mistake of firing an arrow back into the cave and further provoking him. Cue a monstrous typhoon that kills half the crew.Universal Pictures.The LaestrygoniansThanks to some good-old-fashioned forced-perspective shots, Nolan depicts the Laestrygonians as monstrous giants in armor. Odysseus’s men encounter a child in the forest, whose piercing scream summons the giants. They attack the soldiers, inflict heavy losses, and destroy one of the ships.Universal Pictures.CirceSamantha Morton’s Circe is a witch living on the island of Aeaea. She offers Odysseus’s men food laced with drugs, causing them to eat uncontrollably before transforming into pigs—a physical expression of what she sees as their gluttonous true nature.Odysseus has been pushed away by his mutinous crew and is hunting when the transformation occurs. He discovers what has happened after one of the animals he shoots changes back into a man. Rather than seducing Odysseus, Circe eventually agrees to help him and directs him toward the underworld.Scylla and CharybdisThe two dangers guard the same passage. Charybdis is represented as a vast whirlpool, which Odysseus’s crew manages to evade. They are then attacked by a separate sea monster—Scylla—which seizes and kills several sailors.Nolan does not dwell on the traditional anatomical description of Scylla as a creature with six long-necked heads, twelve feet, and snapping dogs around her waist. The film stages the encounter more simply as two consecutive maritime threats.The SirensThey are naked ladies sitting on uncomfortable rocks, with voices sweeter than true love's kiss. When our travelers pass the Sirens, Odysseus orders his men to plug their ears with wax while he is tied to the mast, allowing him to hear the Sirens’ song without steering the ship toward destruction.What they sing to him is more important than what they look like. The Sirens tell Odysseus what he already suspects: that part of him does not truly want to return home and face what he has become.The Cattle of HeliosNot monsters in the traditional sense, but arguably the costliest encounter of the entire journey. Helios is the god of the sun, and these are his sacred cattle. The message is clear: eat them and suffer a terrible fate.Stranded on Thrinacia by bad weather, Odysseus’s starving crew ignore both his orders and Tiresias the soothsayer’s warning. They slaughter the sacred cattle for food. Odysseus alone refuses to join them.When the men return to sea, a monstrous storm destroys the ship and kills everyone aboard except Odysseus, who washes up on Calypso’s island. The crew believe Zeus has sent the storm as punishment, although Nolan continues to leave the precise mechanics of divine intervention hazy.CalypsoNot a monster, but a nymph. Odysseus spends seven years on her island, where lotus flowers suppress his traumatic memories and blur his awareness of time.Nolan has combined two parts of the larger myth here. In Homer’s poem, Calypso holds Odysseus on her island but does not drug him with lotus. The lotus belongs to the separate Lotus-Eaters episode. Nolan’s Calypso, played by Charlize Theron, is also more sympathetic than a straightforward captor: once Odysseus remembers his family, she willingly permits him to leave.