The Odyssey: A Journey of Return, Gods, and the Self

To put those who are thinking about attempting the great work that is The Odyssey at ease, I want to start by saying that yes, I too was intimidated by the very famous tale of Odysseus’s long journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. My eagerness and enthusiasm weren’t something to doubt, but I knew this wasn’t a work I could casually listen to as an audiobook while cleaning or drifting off to sleep.
And this isn’t me advising against listening to the epic as an audiobook either (especially if it’s narrated by Stephen Fry). Funnily enough, doing so might actually bring you closer to how ancient Greeks experienced the tale, as most stories were shared orally, like The Odyssey and The Iliad spoken or sung by travelling poets and bards.
What I mean is that, whether audiobook or not, Kindle or not, hardback, paperback, PDF, or even the upcoming Christopher Nolan film, whatever medium you choose to explore the poem, your focus and attention are essential to the experience.
Not because it is the most arduous or demanding piece of literature you will ever read, but because it is a book that deserves and demands your full appreciation, as a foundational text of the ancient Mediterranean and a work that has endured for nearly 2,800 years. Once you get past the initial hesitation, as I did, and adjust to the language of the epic, which happens surprisingly quickly, that’s when the fun, adventure, and intrigue really begin.

I think it is essential to provide you with a rough (but no less enthusiastic) history lesson before tackling the tale, and to beguile you into the world of Homer’s Odyssey (and even The Iliad if you’re feeling so bold). If anything, it helped me get stoked before I even opened the first page.
The Odyssey, as long as it is, was actually part of an epic cycle made up of eight books, rather than just the two we have left: The Iliad (set a couple of weeks before the end of the ten-year Trojan War) and The Odyssey.
The full ancient Greek epic cycle included eight primary poems that chronicled the entire Trojan War saga. Four of these filled the gaps between The Iliad and The Odyssey, telling stories such as the Trojan Horse, the death of Achilles and the Greek sack of Troy. Unfortunately, all of these intermediate tales are now lost, and we are fortunate to have even the second and seventh parts of the cycle preserved at all.
I think that if we still had those lost works, our understanding of the vast amount of bloodshed and suffering that Homer imagines and references would be much deeper. Odysseus’s pain and distress would appear even more substantial and richly studied than is possible with only the two surviving works.

And for most of Homer’s Greek heroes, despite the unrelenting war, they eventually returned home, while others did not and instead wandered. Odysseus was one of them, and the most famous of his kind, as his wanderings were the longest of all, taking a decade before he finally came home.

Interestingly, however, we start nine years into Odysseus’s journey, with the book beginning in the middle of things, not with him but with his son Telemachus at home, defined by the absence of his father and helpless in the face of the hostile takeover of his home by suitors. Through both these narratives, you come to a rather pleasant surprise: what the epic is really about. At first glance, people tend to see it as an adventure, and in its broadest sense, it is, but at its core, it is a tale of revenge and fortitude. And through this revenge, we come to understand the complex man our hero, Odysseus, truly is.

Though the word “hero” should be used with caution. This is a multifaceted man with darker sides to him and a capacity for brutality. Homer presents a realistically drawn individual with many faults and struggles. For who could endure the horrors of the Trojan War for so long and not come out untainted? This is a man who has both seen and done terrible things, carrying a heavy burden of trauma that now haunts his very being.
He survived because of his brilliance, no doubt, but also his ruthlessness, which begs the question: how much of your old self can you retain if you are willing to do unspeakable things to achieve your most important goal?
In this tale, Homer seems to suggest that a messy, raw fight for survival is also about transforming oneself into something unrecognisable. This idea interestingly goes hand in hand with Athena disguising Odysseus many times so he can go unnoticed. I also see this as Odysseus’s disguise of brutality, adopted to survive the war, but can he really take it off once he comes home?

Although Odysseus is the protagonist and his name is the very title of the tale, personally the biggest pull of this story, and the most exciting part of any piece of Greek literature and mythology, is the gods that plague our mortal characters. They are such mercurial figures who act, surprisingly, very human. These Greek gods provide what a monotheistic one cannot: a closeness and tangibility better described as a grating intrusion, especially if you end up on the wrong side of one.
Now, because of the anthropomorphic nature of the gods, they are able to take on distinct personalities and directly interfere with humans. They propel the narrative in such decisive ways, often choosing sides as though it is some kind of game or gamble, with their own wants and needs at stake. In different stories and from different characters’ perspectives, they are either ruthless or merciful. For example, Athena is Odysseus’s loyal guardian throughout, while Poseidon tries to hinder his journey at every turn and destroys his fleet until he is left alone.

Overall, there are twists and turns in both the characters and the story, and it is thanks to the length of the poem that we see this in such depth. It cannot be made up of just climaxes and action, but must include human emotion and consequence. Odysseus is not a stoic man without feeling or fear, nor is he a man without faults, and neither are his gods, creating a strong base of chaos, but also a foundation that supports human complexity as well.

Written by Etienne Alice Hawkins