BOOK
#40

The Odyssey
by Homer





Review by Edward Tanguay
June 12, 1996

I liked the Odyssey eight times better than the Iliad. Clifton Fadiman compares the two: "When we take up the Odyssey after the Iliad, we step into a different world. Even its sound is different. That of the Iliad is clangorous with the clash of arms; that of the Odyssey murmurous or thunderous with the myriad-mooded sea." T.E. Shaw (the translator of my copy) says "The shattered Iliad yet makes a masterpiece; while the Odyssey by its ease and interest remains the oldest book and vivid it is: never huge or terrible." I expected the Odyssey to be a lot more huge and terrible, more warlike and violent than it was. The story reminded me a lot of Gulliver's travels, but without the heavy political satire (or who knows, maybe the Greek listeners of the bard back then could identify characters like the Cyclops or Poseidon or Circe with certain political personalities). The Odyssey doesn't have the detail of Gulliver's travels either. It is solid with slow movements and deliberate steps, and easy-to-remember blocky scenes with loose logic by moving episodes. You can tell it is a story in the oral tradition, whereas Swift's is one for the written.

The grand theme of the Odyssey is COMING HOME! Sweet, sweet home is something that you long for the whole book. You have to love Odysseus like a lost child as you see on the beach of Calypso's island, where he could become an immortal king if he wanted, but he is sitting there, head in hands, sobbing--sobbing for his home.

In the cavern he did not find great-hearted Odysseus, who sat weeping on the shore as was his wont, crying out his soul with groaning and griefs and letting flow his tears while he eyed the fruitless sea.

He's so tired of traveling from traveling for the last twenty years, and just wants to go home to his castle, his own island, and his loving wife. I've felt like Odysseus a couple times in my life, traveling too long, sleeping in sleeping bags at other people's apartments, in train stations, dealing with one emergency (lack of money) after another (being lost) and longing to just get home. What a universal theme. I bet the listeners of Homer's time could really relate to this story and loved to hear it when they were also miles and miles away from their beloved families and homes.

I liked the child/puppy relationship of Athena to Odysseus. One day she notices that Odysseus should finally make it home, so she goes to the father-figure Zeus and asks him his advice. They both work out a plan together like father and daughter and then it's Athena's project and she starts bringing all the characters into play as if she were playing house (go get Telemachus, travel with him to Sparta, have him talk to Nestor and Menelaus, etc.). Then she keeps coming back to Zeus and asking his advice on what she should do. At one point near the end, Zeus even tells Athena, "look, you started this, do what you feel is right." It's almost as if she had convinced him to buy a puppy and now he wants to teach her responsibility.

I love the Greek gods just for this reason. I noticed it in the Iliad and I really enjoyed it in the Odyssey: the Greek gods are really not noble or virtuous creatures. If anything, they are just like a bunch of kids. They have nothing to do all day but wander around, play, and get themselves into things. Humans are their toys. They have favorite toys, they involve these toys in narratives and play characters. Their emotions and reactions are way out of whack to be considered adult, e.g. Helios says "Zeus, if you don't punish Odysseus, I'm never going to shine again, I'll just go down to Hades and shine!" And Circe turns the whole crew into pigs and then says "Psych!" now you're all humans again! Then she helps them out. And the Gods are rarely fair to the humans or treat them with justice, but usually with selfish, childlike motives, e.g. Poseidon "You poked my son in the eye so now I'm going to destroy your raft!" And doesn't Zeus switch sides a couple times in this book? I feel that the Greek gods represent reality more closely than the Christian God. Life is simply unfair. You can be a benevolent, saintly person and be run over by a drunk teenager on acid, who lives on after the accident, then gets out of jail. The newspapers are full of this. How do you explain these terrible events with a Christian God who is supposed to be all-powerful and all-good (you tend to think: he's either not all-powerful or not all-good or he wouldn't let these terrible things happen). But if you adopt the Greek God analogy, if Zeus wants to strike a good person down with a thunderbolt and disable him for life just on a technicality, he can, and he will. That's just the way it is. The Greeks have a nice tradition of the acceptance of fate in this way.

I also liked the tradition of hospitality that is shown in this book. Travelers are taken in with utmost respect and kindness and surprisingly do not have to give their identity until after they have been served a nice meal. Also, they always seemed to be giving gifts to each other when they would come and go. I also liked the way they would eat their sacrifice instead of just burning it. It just seemed so ecologically minded in an anachronistic kind of way, sacrificing a cow to a god but just burning the bones and the things that didn't taste good. (!) It seems like that wouldn't count. They are basically just burning their trash and calling it a sacrifice, sitting around having a party and a big feast afterward!

Was it Menelaus who snuck up on Poseidon? I'm getting all these Gods confused now, but I liked the following passage of how they snuck up on this God who could change his form, it just seemed so bizarre:

Then he laid himself down. We shouted our cry and leaped upon him grappling him with our hands: to find that the old one had in no wise forgotten the resources of his magic. His first change was into a hairy lion: then a dragon: then a mighty boar. He became a film of water, and afterwards a high-branched tree. We hardened our hearts and held firmly to him throughout.

I would like to see Spielberg film that!

And why is it that "rosy-fingered dawn" appears about 200 times in this book? I'm never going to forget that phrase. It's as if this is a high school play and they only have one back drop for "dawn" and you keep seeing it over and over and over! Rosy-fingered dawn.

Here's a nice action shot of Odysseus trying to stay afloat after his raft was broken up by Poseidon:

Odysseus leaped astride a single beam, riding it as a man rides a plunging horse: while he tore off the clothes which had been fair Calypso's gift. Then he wrapped the veil about his breast and headlong leaped into the waves, striking out with his hands and urgently swimming.

And if you've ever swum for a long time and finally reached the shore, you can identify with Odysseus here, after swimming for two days (!) after his raft broke up:

Odysseus' knees gave way together, and his sinewy arms: for his reserve of manhood had been used up in the long fight with the salt sea. The flesh had puffed out over his body and the sea water gushed in streams from his nostrils and mouth. Wherefore he fell helpless, not able to breathe or speak, and terrible was the weariness which possessed him.

I like what Odysseus says here:

"Lord Alcinous, most eminent, we are in very deed privileged to have within our hearing a singer whose voice is so divinely pure. I tell you, to my mind the acme of intelligent delight is reached when a company sits feasting in some hall, by tables garnished with bread and meat, the while a musician charms their ears and a cup-bearer draws them wine and carries it round served ready for their drinking. Surely this, as I say, is the best thing in the world."

The cyclops eye-stabbing incident was pretty narly. It's a quite unforgettable scene and described well here. They need to get out of the cave, this is their one chance, they've got to do it right the first time:

I spoke, and he answered from his cruel heart. "I will eat No-man finally, after all his friends. The others first--that shall be your benefit." he sprawled full-length, belly up, on the ground, lolling his fat neck aside; and sleep that conquers all men conquered him. Heavily he vomited out all his load of drink, and gobbets of human flesh swimming in wine spurted gurgling from his throat. Forthwith I thrust our spike into the deep embers of the fire to get it burning hot: and cheered my fellows with brave lords lest any of them hang back through fear. Soon the stake of olive wood despite its greenness was almost trembling into flame with a terrible glowing incandescence. I snatched it from the fire, my men helping. Some power from on high breathed into us all a mad courage, by whose strength they charged with the great spear and stabbed its sharp point right into his eye. I flung my weight upon it from above so that it bored home. As a ship- builder's bit drills its timbers, steadily twirling by reason of the drag from the hide thong which his mates underneath pull to and fro alternately, so we held the burning pointed stake in his eye and spun it, till the boiling blood bulbbled about its pillar of fire. Eyebrows, with eyelids shrivelled and stank in the blast of his consuming eyeball: yea, the very roots of the eye crackled into flame."

The chapter they spent in Hades was interesting in that they got to talk to all the dead people. Hades is funny, dead ghosts just standing around talking about their woes while they lived. Agamemnon justly warns Odysseus to be careful when he gets back home!

One reason I liked reading the Odyssey is that it is full of tall tales, things that stretch your imagination to glorify a hero. It's just fun to read and let your mind be entertained, e.g. the rocks that the ship was supposed to go through but "between them not even a bird may slip unhurt."

The suitors reminded me of a bunch of fraternity guys who come to a party and ruin it by being loud, boisterous, and increasingly violent and drunk. The description of the suitors throughout the book gives the impression of them getting more and more out of control so that at the end, they are ready to openly fight against Odysseus and you are routing for Odysseus to really sock it to 'em in revenge for treating his people so poorly and taking advantage of everything he owns. The scene where the suitors' food starts to bleed as they eat it while they give out frenzied laughs is strong and foreboding. The end of this story is done out nice. I especially liked the very end where you have son, father, and grandfather all fighting on the same side, and grandpa gets so excited he chucks a spear and gets a direct hit! It's a great, comic way to end the whole story, the whole family raging on the enemy! This joyous sight is quite a contrast to the first time we encounter Odysseus in the book, sad, alone and crying on the beach far away from home.

Odysseus is contrasted in many ways in this book. His son is a weaker foil for him, showing the experience and grandeur of the older Odysseus but still showing the bravery and well-meaning nature of Telemachus. Odysseus is also shown to be braver and more vivid by being compared to his mostly faceless and somewhat cowardly crew. They are always messing things up and he always has to set them straight. And the awful, terrible relationship between Agamemnon and his wife serves as a nice foil to the fully romantic vision of marriage between Odysseus and Penelope, one longing for home for twenty years and the other waiting for him, avoiding others remaining true and pure until he finally comes home to her!

The form of the story is nice in that it overlaps, part of it being a flashback as Odysseus explains his adventures to the Phaeacians in the middle of the book. I liked that, as it made the story less tedious than if it had been a chronological history of events from Troy to Ithaca.

Wow, you can write a lot about this story. It's nice, it's old, and I look forward to noticing pieces of it turning up in other literature that I read. Like Clifton Fadiman writes about the Odyssey, "The story is well known even to those who have never read it. Like the Bible, it is less a book than part of the permanent furniture of our minds."

Edward Tanguay


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