Critical Analysis of The Odyssey

The Odyssey By Homer

Introduction

 The Odyssey is a sequel to Homer’s  Iliad, a poem about the decade-long Trojan War. But don't let any prejudice about sequels throw you off: the Iliad and the Odyssey may have a lot of the same characters, but they're more like fraternal than identical twins: they complement each other.

The Iliad is all about achieving glory and fame through warlike deeds, a concept the Greeks called kleos. Basically, it's full of pages and pages of heroes doing heroic things heroically. Which is awesome in its own way, and it made a fun, If not very accurate, movie. But even warriors have to go home eventually, and the Odyssey is all about the desire to go home: to see a familiar face, to kiss your wife, and to give your old dog a pat on the head.

Almost three thousand years ago, people who lived in the starkly beautiful part of the world we now call Greece were telling stories about a great war. The person credited with later gathering all these stories together and telling them as one unified epic is a man named Homer. Homer’s great war stories are called, in English, the Iliad and the Odyssey. (In Greek, the Iliad is Ilias and the Odyssey is Odysseia.) Homer’s stories probably can be traced to historical struggles for control of the waterway leading from the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. These battles might have taken place as early as 1200 B.C.—a time that was at least as long ago for Homer’s audience as the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock is for us. Homer’s first epic was the Iliad, which tells of a ten-year war fought on the plains outside the walls of a great city called Troy (also known as Ilion).

 The ruins of Troy can still be seen in western Turkey. In Homer’s story the Trojan War was fought between the people of Troy and an alliance of Greek kings (at that time each island and area of the Greek mainland had its own king). The Iliad tells us that the cause of the war was sexual jealousy: The world’s most beautiful woman, Helen, abandoned her husband, Menelaus, a Greek king, and ran off with Paris, a prince of Troy. (See “The Beautiful Helen,” page 107.) The Odyssey, Homer’s second epic, is the story of the attempt of one Greek soldier, Odysseus, to get home after the Trojan War. All epic poems in the Western world owe something to the basic patterns established by these two stories.

Summary

Ten years after the fall of Troy, the victorious Greek hero Odysseus has still not returned to his native Ithaca. A band of rowdy suitors, believing Odysseus to be dead, has overrun his palace, courting his faithful -- though weakening -- wife, Penelope, and going through his stock of food. With permission from Zeus, the goddess Athena, Odysseus' greatest immortal ally, appears in disguise and urges Odysseus' son Telemachus to seek news of his father at Pylos and Sparta. However, the suitors, led by Antinous, plan to ambush him upon his return.

As Telemachus tracks Odysseus' trail through stories from his old comrades-in-arms, Athena arranges for the release of Odysseus from the island of the beautiful goddess Calypso, whose prisoner and lover he has been for the last eight years. Odysseus sets sail on a makeshift raft, but the sea god Poseidon, whose wrath Odysseus incurred earlier in his adventures by blinding Poseidon's son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, conjures up a storm. With Athena's help, Odysseus reaches the Phaeacians. Their princess, Nausicaa, who has a crush on the handsome warrior, opens the palace to the stranger. Odysseus withholds his identity for as long as he can until finally, at the Phaeacians' request, he tells the story of his adventures.

Odysseus relates how, following the Trojan War, his men suffered more losses at the hands of the Kikones, then were nearly tempted to stay on the island of the drug-addled Lotus Eaters. Next, the Cyclops Polyphemus devoured many of Odysseus' men before an ingenious plan of Odysseus' allowed the rest to escape -- but not before Odysseus revealed his name to Polyphemus and thus started his personal war with Poseidon. The wind god Ailos then provided Odysseus with a bag of winds to aid his return home, but the crew greedily opened the bag and sent the ship to the land of the giant, man-eating Laistrygonians, where they again barely escaped.

On their next stop, the goddess Circe tricked Odysseus' men and turned them into pigs. With the help of the god Hermes, Odysseus defied her spell and metamorphosed the pigs back into men. They stayed on her island for a year in the lap of luxury, with Odysseus as her lover, before moving on and resisting the temptations of the seductive and dangerous Sirens, navigating between the sea monster Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis, and plumbing the depths of Hades to receive a prophecy from the blind seer Tiresias. Resting on the island of Helios, Odysseus' men disobeyed his orders not to touch the oxen. At sea, Zeus punished them and all but Odysseus died in a storm. It was then that Odysseus reached Calypso's island.

Odysseus finishes his story, and the Phaeacians hospitably give him gifts and ferry him home on a ship. Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar and instructs him to seek out his old swineherd, Eumaeus; she will recall Telemachus from his own travels. With Athena's help, Telemachus avoids the suitors' ambush and reunites with his father, who reveals his identity only to his son and swineherd. He devises a plan to overthrow the suitors with their help.

In disguise as a beggar, Odysseus investigates his palace. The suitor and a few of his old servants generally treat him rudely as Odysseus sizes up the loyalty of Penelope and his other servants. Penelope, who notes the resemblance between the beggar and her presumably dead husband, proposes a contest: she will, at last, marry the suitor who can string Odysseus' great bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axe heads.

Only Odysseus can pull off the feat. Bow in hand, he shoots and kills the suitor Antinous and reveals his identity. With Telemachus, Eumaeus, and his goatherd Philoitios at his side, Odysseus leads the massacre of the suitors, aided only at the end by Athena. Odysseus lovingly reunites with Penelope, his knowledge of their bed that he built the proof that overcomes her skepticism that he is an impostor. Outside of town, Odysseus visits his ailing father, Laertes, but an army of the suitors' relatives quickly finds them. With the encouragement of a disguised Athena, Laertes strikes down the ringleader, Antinous' father. Before the battle can progress any further, Athena, on command from Zeus, orders peace between the two sides.

Analysis

Odysseus

Odysseus has the defining character traits of a Homeric leader: strength, courage, nobility, a thirst for glory, and confidence in his authority. His most distinguishing trait, however, is his sharp intellect. Odysseus’s quick thinking helps him out of some very tough situations, as when he escapes from the cave of the Cyclops in Book, or when he hides his slaughter of the suitors by having his minstrel strike up a wedding tune in Book. He is also a convincing, articulate speaker and can win over or manipulate his audience with ease. When he first addresses Nausicaa on the island of Scheria, for example, his suave, comforting approach quickly wins her trust.

Like other Homeric heroes, Odysseus longs to win kleos (“glory” won through great deeds), but he also wishes to complete his nostos (“homecoming”). He enjoys his luxurious life with Calypso in an exotic land, but only to a point. Eventually, he wants to return home, even though he admits that his wife cannot compare with Calypso. He thinks of home throughout the time he spends with the Phaeacians and also while on Circe’s island. Sometimes his glory-seeking gets in the way of his home-seeking, however. He sacks the land of the Cicones but loses men and time in the process. He waits too long in the cave of Polyphemus, enjoying the free milk and cheese he finds, and is trapped there when the Cyclops returns.

Homeric characters are generally static. Though they may be very complex and realistic, they do not change over the course of the work as characters in modern novels and stories do. Odysseus and especially Telemachus break this rule. Early in his adventures,Odysseus’s love of glory prompts him to reveal his identity to the Cyclops and bring Poseidon’s wrath down on him. By the end of the epic, he seems much more willing to temper pride with patience. Disguised as a beggar, he does not immediately react to the abuse he receives from the suitors. Instead, he endures it until the traps he has set and the loyalties he has secured put him in a position from which he can strike back effectively.

Telemachus

Just an infant when his father left for Troy, Telemachus is still maturing when the Odyssey begins. He is wholly devoted to his mother and to maintaining his father’s estate, but he does not know how to protect them from the suitors. After all, it has only been a few years since he first realized what the suitors’ intentions were. His meeting with Athena in changes things. Aside from improving his stature and bearing, she teaches him the responsibilities of a young prince. He soon becomes more assertive. He confronts the suitors and denounces the abuse of his estate, and when Penelope and Eurycleia become anxious or upset, he does not shy away from taking control.

Telemachus never fully matches his father’s talents, at least not by the Odyssey’s conclusion. He has a stout heart and an active mind, and sometimes even a bit of a temper, but he never schemes with the same skill or speaks with quite the same fluency as Odysseus. He accidentally leaves a weapon’s storeroom unlocked, a careless mistake that allows the suitors to arm themselves. While Odysseus does make a few mistakes in judgment over the course of the epic, it is difficult to imagine him making such an absentminded blunder. Telemachus has not yet inherited his father’s brassy pride either. The scene with the bow captures the endpoint of his development perfectly. He tries and tries to string it, and very nearly does, but not quite. This episode reminds us that, at the close of the Odyssey, Telemachus still cannot match his father’s skills but is well on his way.

Penelope

Though she has not seen Odysseus in twenty years, and despite pressure the suitors place on her to remarry, Penelope never loses faith in her husband. Her cares make her somewhat flighty and excitable, however. For this reason, Odysseus, Telemachus, and Athena often prefer to leave her in the dark about matters rather than upset her. Athena must distract her, for instance, so that she does not discover Odysseus’s identity when Eurycleia is washing him. Athena often comes to her in dreams to reassure or comfort her, for Penelope would otherwise spend her nights weeping in her bed.

Though her love for Odysseus is unyielding, she responds to the suitors with some indecision. She never refuses to remarry outright. Instead, she puts off her decision and leads them on with promises that she will choose a new husband as soon as certain things happen. Her astute delaying tactics reveal her sly and artful side. The notion of not remarrying until she completes a burial shroud that she will never complete cleverly buys her time. Similarly, some commentators claim that her decision to marry whomever wins the archery contest of results from her awareness that only her husband can win it. Some even claim that she recognizes her husband before she admits it to him in.

As goddess of wisdom and battle, Athena naturally has a soft spot for the brave and wily Odysseus. She helps him out of many tough situations. She does not merely impart sense and safety to her passive charge, however. She takes an interest in Odysseus for the talents he already has and actively demonstrates. Although she reassures Odysseus during the battle with the suitors, she does not become fully involved, preferring instead to watch Odysseus fight and prevail on his own.

She also often helps Telemachus—as when she sends him off to Pylos and Sparta to earn a name for himself—but she has the most affection for Odysseus. Athena is confident, practical, clever, a master of disguises, and a great warrior, characteristics she finds reflected in Telemachus. Her role as goddess of the womanly arts gets very little attention in the Odyssey. Penelope works at the loom all the time but rarely sees Athena, and then usually only in dreams.

 Conclusion

In the end, most of the problems are solved by Odysseus using his cunning and tactics to outsmart the suitors, monsters, and any obstacle that gets in his way. New problems were created by him because he couldn’t control the urge to keep his mouth shut. Most of the obstacles were caused by Poseidon and his ship mates. Because his shipmates couldn’t control their urges and had to know what was in the bag, or had to taste the cattle, a lot of his problems could have been prevented. Also, if Odysseus hadn’t teased the Cyclops, he could have made it home faster.
All of the characters have their own tests that apply to their specific situations. Telemachus goes through seeing his mother full of misery and sadness, while the suitors are pursuing her, and having to deal with the suitors without any guidance from anyone. Penelope goes through the grief of losing a husband and then losing her son, and having the suitors demanding her to marry one of them.

 Odysseus’s sailors go through being turned into pigs, being away from their family and seeing their shipmates be killed by numerous monsters, as well as dying, though they brought that on themselves. Odysseus goes through the loss of his family and shipmates, as well as seeing his sailors dying. The biggest test that he had was to survive his journey and to get home and beat the suitors so he could be with his wife and son. He had to fight monsters, gain the trust of different kings, and please two goddesses. After he got home, Penelope gave him two different tests that would prove that he was her husband. The first was getting the arrow from his bow through the axes, while he was disguised. The second was telling their maid to get her bed, even though Odysseus had built it into their home. The test that Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus shared was the suitors, and what to do with them.