By now, all the others who had fought at Troy—
At least those who had survived the war and the sea—
Were safely back home. Only Odysseus
Still longed to return to his home and his wife.

The ideas of home and the homecoming are important themes in The Odyssey, as is the desire to gather together and recollect. Everyone has a desire to have a physical home, a mental home, a psychological home. This reminds me of that profound moment where Virginia Woolf declares, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Odysseus is fundamentally (lest we forget) on a journey, and Penelope waits for him, maintaining her house with as much decency as she can.

Telemachus took a deep breath and said:
You want the truth, and I will give it to you. 
My mother says that Odysseus is my father. 
I don’t know this myself. No one witnesses
 His own begetting. If I had my way, I’d be the son
Of a man fortunate enough to grow old at home.
 But it’s the man with the most dismal fate of all
 They say I was born from—since you want to know.

Eurymachus, my father is not coming home.
 I no longer trust any news that may come,
 Or any prophecy my mother may have gotten
 From a seer she has summoned up to the house.
 My guest was a friend of my father’s from Taphos.
 He says he is Mentes, son of Anchialus 
And captain of the seafaring Taphians. Thus Telemachus. But in his heart he knew 
It was an immortal goddess.

“I wish him luck,” some cocksure lord chimed in, “as good as his luck in bending back that weapon.” (530)

The suitors numbers have given them confidence–a certain camaraderie in competition for Penelope’s hand. She has thus far shown her resourcefulness–kerdea. When we see the suitor sneer, he is characterized even more evilly, and his taunts ironize his final fate. This suitor reminds me of the doubting Brecca from Beowulf. At the same time, Penelope and Telemachus seem to hold on to a hope even they acknowledge to be shaky.

You dogs! you never imagined I’d return from Troy–
so cocksure that you bled my house to death,
ravished my serving women–wooed my wife
behind my back while I was still alive!
No fear of the gods who rule the skies op there,
no fear that men’s revenge might arrive someday–
now all your necks are in the noose.

What is the crime of the suitors? That they have imposed on a household and attempted to take the wife of another. In many ways, Odysseus has similar issues; his greatest weakness are hubris (he wins the discus toss when Broadsea insults him, he brags frequently, some times acts in flourished ways that get him into trouble) and women (he lived with Circe for a year and Calypso for seven). At the same time, we know that Odysseus is a man of greater quality and this passage marks justice long overdue. For the first time reading this, I was struck by the parallels in Tolkiens “Return of the King,” particularly with the scouring of the Shire, when the hobbits must stand up to the thuggish men from the South under Saruman. After all their journeys, after all their struggles, after all that they had learned–petty, freeloading men stood between them and the home they once knew and loved. Things will never be the same–the drama of the return proves that–but what catharsis to be able to cleanse the petty to make a home pure again.

Penelope felt her knees go slack, her heart surrender,
recognizing the strong clear signs Odysseus offered.
She dissolved in tears, rushed to Odysessus, flung her arms
around his neck and kissed his head and cried out,
“Odysseus–don’t flare up at me now, not you,
always the most understanding man alive!
The gods, it was the gods who sent us sorrow–
they grudged us both a life in each other’s arms
from the heady zest of youth to the stoop of old age. (547)

This passage highlights the theme of fate in The Odyssey in many ways. Penelope views her husband’s long absence the result of the capricious gods. This view of fate is well supported throughout the book, and it is supported additionally by augury and the prophet Tiresias. Nevertheless, Penelope’s faithfulness is something of a contrast to her husband, who has been victim to his weaknesses of pride and women more than once on his return. It’s hard to imagine what life might have been like if Odysseus had never left Ithaca, but it seems like his marriage to Penelope would have been a happy one, dispute the hero’s waywardness in his travels. The pair seem to have much in common. Odysseus is resourceful; he knows when to hide his identity and when not to. He also exhibited much cleverness in tricking the Cyclops. Penelope is also very resourceful; she tests her husband by ordering her bed moved, and Odysseus knows that it cannot be moved because it was build on the tree the house was build around. Penelope and Odysseus, along with their helper Athena, are clever witted and it serves them well.

Topics of Interest

  • Storytelling
  • Immortality-everyone wants home.
  • The journey-literal as well as one from boyhood to manhood. Telemachus. But Odysseus grows, too.
  • Kleos (glory)
  • Xenia (hospitality)
  • Kerdea (resourcefulness)
  • The importance of family
  • Fate- augury, Tyresias. At what point is he fated to get home?
  • Temptation-consider Jason’s approach to the sirens versus Odysseus’.
  • Catharsis- continual for Odysseus. But Odysseus is also the author of a cleansing for his home upon his return. Cathartic for the reader.
  • The tension between passion and constancy.
  • The capricious gods
  • Falling (think Elpenor)

Key Moments

  • Breaking point- the song of the harper
  • Episodes of Kerdea.
  • Big scene with Cyclops

Three Gifts From the Greeks
[“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”]

  1. Democracy
  2. Dialogue (Beware of dialogues that go nowhere).
  3. Drama (So invested in arts that propositional truth is lost?)

Greek Thought & Story

  • Socratic teaching shared thoughts in the name of truth. Free dialogue was encouraged. Socrates believed in forms, a higher realm where truth resided–eventually people talking about truth would bump against it. For instance, people talk about trees–that leads to what is tree? What is treeness? Or what about virtue? Other concepts? Other things? At that point you are accessing form. We are talking about universals. We talk about hero, which hearkens the idea of The Hero (archetypes go back to the Greeks).
  • Dramatists take us to the realm of the forms–deep truth in music, poetry, theatre, the arts.
  • It’s one thing to take orders; it’s quite another to ask why.
  • Greek philosophy lessoned the need for the gods, the capricious gods. This marks a paradigm shift.

Click to listen to the free Librivox audiobook of The Odyssey.