The Odyssey

Despite all the turmoil and death - lots and lots of death - The Odyssey is, in the end, a happy story about a hero's homecoming.

Not the case with our next book, Oedipus the King. I've read the Oedipus trilogy several times for class, but it has been a while since I last spent time with the doomed king.

Tomorrow, we will start Oedipus the King. The book is (thankfully for some, I'm sure) much shorter than The Odyssey. I will be posting less frequently - about twice a week, maybe more - so that you won't get sick of me commenting on every single page of the play.

Reading The Odyssey has felt like its own mini-epic. There were times when I thought that Poseidon, or maybe the god of Class Notes, would thwart my attempt to reach the final page. But here we are, and I feel a sense of accomplishment for having completed the book.

"Hello, Penelope? Can you hear me? I get no service here. Let me sail closer to land."

"Now resourceful Odysseus stripped his rags from him, and sprang/ up atop the great threshold, holding his bow and quiver..." (XXII, 1-2)

Oh yeah. It's payback time.

Packed with gruesome fun and disgusting imagery, Odysseus finally gets his revenge, dispatching the suitors with barely a scratch, taunting them ("either fight me/ or run, if any of you can escape death and its spirits." (XXII, 65-66)) as he slaughters them.

He may have only his son and his loyal swineherd and oxherd, but the plan is finally in motion. After watching the suitors fail, Odysseus strung the bow with ease and fired a single arrow through all the axes.

He's trapped all the suitors. Book XXII looks like it's going to be the time when he finally triumphs. The wait has been unbearable and at the same time, perfectly paced. I feel that up to this point, Homer has toyed with the reader in a wonderful way, giving me just enough to keep reading without spoiling the culminating action.

With Odysseus back in his house, everything is wrapping up nicely. He has tricked the suitors into entering a game of skill he knows he will win. The bad guys are making clear who they are through their atrocious behavior. The good guys are doing the same by showing their disgust and their loyalty to Odysseus.

Now, all we are relying on is Odysseus's patience so he can spring his trap at the perfect moment.

Those who wish Odysseus and Odysseus-disguised-as-beggar harm are certainly evil and selfish and cruel, but they sure know how to trash talk.

Afraid that someone is chipping away at his free meal, the beggar Iros challenges Odysseus to a fight and plans to "hit him with both hands, and spatter all of the teeth out/ from his jaws on the ground, as if he were a wild pig rooting/ the crops." (XVIII, 28-30)

The buildup to the final battle has me gripping the book so hard, my fingers have made a permanent imprint. The pacing since Odysseus's arrival has been perfect.

After all those horrible years of travelling, Odysseus finally wakes up in Ithaka. End of story, right? Not so fast. The suitors obviously won't be thrilled to see the mighty king, so Athena steps in to help with a little chicanery. She disguises Odysseus as an old man to allow him to get the lay of the land while she summons backup (remember his strapping son, Telemachos?).

In the last two books (XI and XII), Odysseus leaves Circe, goes down to Hades, comes back to Circe to pick up his dead friend, outsmarts the Sirens, has his crew outsmarted by the gods on Helios's island and loses all his friends and his ships. What more can Homer do to a hero?

The most disturbing section, for me, was Circe's warning that Odysseus would lose six men to Skylla. He knew it was coming, yet he said nothing to his men.

At first, I believed his behavior showed uncharacteristic callousness. He should have warned them.

Blown off course after his men, overcome with jealousy, nearly mutiny, Odysseus ends up on the island of the evil Laistrygones where "Gladly/ my ship, and only mine, fled out from the overhanging/ cliffs to open water, but the others were all destroyed there." (X, 130-132)

I've mentioned before my surprise at the thorough development of some of the characters. Because this epic poem is filled with destruction, gods and mythical happenings, I sometimes expect the characters to be as flat as action heroes. Again, I was pleasantly surprised when our perfect Odysseus showed the inherent flaws in his character in Book X.

" ... I was worn out/ with always handling the sheet myself, and I would not give it/ to any other companion, so we could come home quicker..." (X, 31-33).

God-like Odysseus uses everything in his playbook to defeat Polyphemos, the Cyclops. He slyly gets him drunk, then uses his great strength to jam a tree into the eye of the son of Poseidon to prevent the beast from eating more of his men (he "caught up two together and slapped them, like killing puppies,/ against the ground, and the brains ran all over the floor, soaking the ground." (IX, 289-291) Gross!)

Could Odysseus be a better man? Everywhere he goes, he's lavished with women, booze, food and "fine underbedding of purple and spread blankets above it,/ and fleecy robes to be an over-all covering." (VII, 337-338).

Meanwhile, all he wants is to return home to a kingdom packed with ungrateful men trying to steal his wife.

For someone so single-minded, all these wonderful offerings seem worse than a pauper's life. Because of his discipline, each time he leaves another paradise to confront the unknown or certain death, I pump my fist a bit.

After the shipwreck, Odysseus finally makes it to shore, where he is spoiled by Alkinoos and his kingdom. Again, the themes in books VI and VII run consistently through great literature. Neighborliness and generosity are givens for people who believe in good, and through their kindness, they earn the gods' favor.

One of my favorite of the Greek myths is the story of Aphrodite and Adonis. Part of the joy comes from saying the word "anemone," but part of it is also how the story is uncommon in the catalogue. The gods have their choice of women, and choose they do. But it is rare for the goddesses to mess around with mortals.

My last entry went off on a bit of a tangent, which I think seems to suit the last couple books of The Odyssey.

So, while I was rambling, here's what we missed:

Telemachos visits Nestor, who does a little rambling himself about the Trojan War, in which Odysseus fought so bravely. He's got stories, but if Telemachos really want to hear about his father, he needs to visit Menelaos.

I recently read New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War, his narrative about covering the war in Iraq. I picked it up from the New York Public Library during my lunch break, and on my way back to work, I took a seat on a fountain in College Walk and read the prologue. I planned only to read a page or two (it was freezing outside) but tore through the prologue, a narrative about the siege on Fallujah.

One of the aspects of Lattimore’s translation I’m enjoying most is the accessibility. There is some awkward phrasing, and at times, I have to pause and ask, “Who are we talking about now?” But the rhythm is soothing and easy to read, and the simple wording makes even the most complicated relationships understandable.

When I came across lines 236–238 in Book III, I had to pause to admire the effortless explanation of such a nebulous, powerful topic.

I like hating the bad guys. I really do. But Book II lays it on a little thick for my tastes.

We already know that the suitors are motivated by greed and selfishness. Are the accusations that Penelope is a tease really necessary? What about hoping that once Telemachos "goes in a hollow ship, he also might perish straying far from his people ... " (II, 332-333)?

These aren't rhetorical questions. Please share your thoughts.

With only Book One out of the way, it's already becoming apparent why Homer's epic poems mark the beginning of Western literature. Already we have the mourning hero. Telemachos is tall and strong and probably handsome. He obviously is "imagining in his mind his great father" (I, 115) every day even though he doesn't know Odysseus - which isn't more far-fetched than the plot of any sappy action movie - but his grieving doesn't make him stupid (we'll see how a little later).

Reading Lattimore’s chatty introduction was worth every second I spent on it. Unlike most of you (except maybe the slackers), this is my first time reading The Odyssey in its entirety. The translator does a wonderful job of giving us just enough of a description of the plot to get us willing to plunge into this very long poem.

For those who forgot, or who skipped the introduction, here’s what we know so far:

It is difficult for me to buy into Richard Lattimore's claim that "symbolism and allegory seem foreign to the biology of early Greek epic." (p. 15) Turning a bunch of lonely, wandering sailors into swine? It doesn't seem that one can get more symbolic than that.

But Lattimore is the expert, and I don't think I, with my casual reading of the great tragedies as experience, am going to begin questioning him. Instead, I'll try to stick to the surface plot of the poem.

Just holding The Odyssey makes my task feel daunting. It’s 350 pages of people who may have existed traveling back from a war that may have happened, and most of their adventures probably aren’t close to what really happened. The chance for boredom slaps me. I’d say that cracking the spine is like staring off a cliff, but the cliff offers two definitive options — walk away or jump — while Homer presents the third, even scarier choice of the slow fizzle of enthusiasm that leads to Cliff’s Notes.