A pattern. At the most decisive moments Odysseus shuts his eyes. He stays awake nine days at the tiller after Aeolus’s bag of winds, holding the ship straight for Ithaca, and falls asleep in sight of his own shoreline. The men, curious, open the bag. The wind blows them all the way back to where they started. On Thrinacia he climbs the headland, prays, and falls asleep — and the men slaughter the cattle while he is gone. [SPOILER: He even sleeps on the magic Phaeacian ship the night it carries him home, and wakes on Ithaca’s black sand with the gifts of a king around him and no idea where he is.] Sleep is when the trick stops working. Cunning needs eyes open. Every time he closes them, the world arranges a disaster for him to find when he wakes.
Sleep as Evasion
Odysseus sleeps within sight of Ithaca and wakes a thousand miles off. He sleeps on Thrinacia and wakes to the smell of forbidden meat.