The Odyssey of Homer

Summary

Homer's second poem was The Odyssey. While shorter than The Iliad, in many respects, this can be even more fun to read than its predecessor.  This is an adventure story, not a war story—and what an adventure it is! It is hailed by many as the greatest adventure story ever, and it's easy to see where they're coming from. The hero, Odysseus, is taken all over, to places most minds could have never thought of in a thousand years. It is incredible. The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus' return from the Trojan war and the troubles which are happening back in his home at Ithaca. 

The story actually opens at the end of the story. Odysseus is on Ogygia, the island of Calypso, where he has been a "prisoner" for the past eight years. The gods are deciding his fate. Do they release him or not? Athena, daughter of Zeus thinks he should be allowed to leave. Zeus finally agrees with her and tells Calypso that he will sink her island is she doesn't release him. What choice did she have? 

Meanwhile, Athena has gone to Ithaca, Odysseus' home, to tell Telemachus (Odysseus' son) to gather community support against Penelope's (Odysseus' wife) suitors. Basically all of Ithaca thinks that Odysseus must be dead—he's been gone for eighteen years! She also tells him to set out in search for news of his father. 

Telemachus tries the whole meeting thing, but that doesn't really work out. They kind of want this pesky son to be dead. So Athena helps him get a ship and sail to see Nestor, who fought with Odysseus at Troy. He can't get any news there, so he sails off to find Menelaos, remember him, Helen's husband? He knows of Odysseus' detainment on Ogygia, for he wrestled with a seer and beat him. He learned of the whole Calypso thing from the seer.

While Telemachus is out gathering news, the suitors of Penelope are back in Ithaca planning to ambush and kill dear ol' Telemachus upon his return.  Meanwhile, Odysseus has been released from Ogygia and has set sail on the high seas. Poseidon, however, angry with him, shipwrecks him. Odysseus manages to swim to the island of Scheria. Athena leads him to the palace of King Alcinous. The King orders feasting and partying in honor of their guest. Odysseus reveals his identity and tells the story of how he got there.

His story starts with he and his men leaving Troy in twelve ships. They land on an Island and sack the city of Circones, but his men get drunk and are forced off the island. From there, great storms carried them to the Land of the Lotus Eaters. There, many of his men succumbed to eating the lotus, making them forget their homes and desire to return. They had to be dragged back because of unwillingness. Their next major stop was the Land of the Cyclopes, giant one-eyed monsters. They landed and went into a cave, which turned out to be the home of Polyphemus. Several of Odysseus' men became dinner. Just a tip of advice—if you ever come across a giant, one-eyed monster whose hand is bigger than you body—don't mess with it! Well, to make a long story short, they poked Polyphemus' eyes put in a gruesome scene with a sharp log, and then escaped by hiding under sheep skins. As Odysseus escaped, he couldn't resist taunting the beast and he told him what his name was. Polyphemus prayed to Poseidon, his father, to curse Odysseus—this is why Poseidon was acting like an evil beast towards Odysseus.

Next, they arrived at the Floating Isle of Aeoleus, the god of wind. He did an incredible favor for Odysseus, putting all of the bad winds into a bag and giving it to him. Now only the good winds remained. When the ship finally came within sight of Ithaca, Odysseus (what an idiot) fell asleep. His men open the bag, thinking that it is treasure, and their ship is blown as far away from Ithaca as you can get. They stopped in a strange harbor only to find eleven of the ships suddenly devoured along with them men by the giant, cannibalistic Laestrygonians. Only Odysseus' own ship with his crew escaped.

Then, they came to the Isle of Aeaea, the island of the witch Circe. Odysseus sent half of his men to explore the island, only to be turned into pigs by Circe. With the help of Hermes, Odysseus was able to overpower her and force her to restore his men from their pork state. He stayed as her guest for a year. Circe told him how to get to the underworld to learn about his future from the prophet Teiresias. While in Hades, Odysseus met with Elpenor, one of his crew who died on Aeaea, who told him to go back and give him a proper burial. Odysseus did just that. While back on Aeaea, Circe warned him about the Sirens who lure sailors to their island with their singing and the kill them. To counter them, Odysseus filled his men's ears with wax so they couldn't hear the songs, and tied himself to the mast, so he could hear when they were past but wouldn't be able to force his men to turn toward the island (smart guy!). They then lose many men to the great sea beasts Scylla and Charybdis. Then, his men made the mistake of killing a cattle of Apollo the sun-god. For this his men were killed on the sea in a storm. Only Odysseus survived. He managed to swim to Ogygia, and you know the story from there. 

After hearing his story, King Alcinous gives Odysseus a ship and men to take him back to Ithaca. They set him asleep on the shore. Odysseus awakens, not knowing he is in Ithaca, until he is met by Athena who tells him everything. Athena tells him what he shall do and then disguises him as an old beggar so that the suitors will not recognize him. Then he infiltrates, becomes known, there's the battle sequence, Odysseus naturally wins and he and Penelope live happily ever after on Ithaca with Telemachus.

Many important ideals of Greeks life are shown in this poem. First, there's hospitality. This was very important in Greek life. Whenever a stranger comes to your house, you are supposed to treat them like kings—for you never know; your strange visitor just might be a god in disguise testing you. One example of this is King Alcinous' receiving of Odysseus. He lavishes him with gifts, food, treasure and has a great party in honor of his guest. Also, Telemachus is warmly received by Kings Nestor and Melenaos. Another important are of Greek life Homer shows is loyalty. Penelope never gave up on her husband. She knew in her heart that he was still alive and coming home and wouldn't choose a new husband. Then, there was Odysseus, who never gave up trying to get home to his wife, even though he had many opportunities to stay with MANY beautiful women. He wanted his wife and would take no other. Also, Athena never gave up with Odysseus; she kept helping him for all of those years—even when it appeared to be a lost cause.

When Homer was writing poems, poetry was told always from a third person point of view. It was generally set up so that a muse was telling the story through the bard himself. This continued to be the style of writing until the days of Sappho, whom you shall read about later. Also, most Greek epics were written in Dactylic Hexameter. Homer did not deviate from this tradition. Now, what is Dactylic Hexameter, you ask? This is the meter in which the poem is written. Here's how it works. In the dactylic category, there are three other name. This tells you how many and where stressed syllables are in the poetry. On the below chart, let the "-"s be unstressed syllables and the "/"s be stressed syllables.

There are also several other types of meter which can be created with four syllable patterns.

Each of those patterns is called a foot. Now, each line contains a number of feet. Each number has a specific name which describes it. The name of the foot and the number of feet combine to form the meter. Here are the name associated with each number of feet:

In general, heptameter is the largest used, so they usually don't give names beyond that. Now you know what it means when it is said that Homer wrote in Dactylic Hexameter—six dactyls per line, easy huh? Actually, it's not that easy. There are only five dactyls in a Dactylic Hexameter, actually. After the five dactyls, there is a spondee, or two stressed syllables. Nothing in this world is easy is it? TOUGH!

For the people of ancient Greece, The Odyssey was all that a school student would need. This poem was their bible, their language book, their history book and their pleasure reading book all rolled into one. If you have a combination like that, what else would you need?

In addition to being just awesome an awesome story, The Odyssey is also a great literary work of a literary genius. For example, the story doesn't start at the beginning, but it starts in medias res, or, in the middle of things. This creates an interesting double suspense thing. This is because we want to know what is going to happen next, but we also know what Odysseus' present states is, and we want to know why he's where he is. This takes to suspense to a whole new level. Also, there are actually two plots to this story, which aren't brought together until the end. You have the main plot, the one of Odysseus, and the sub-plot, Telemachus' trying troubles (what I just did is called an alliteration, by the way—many words starting with the same sound). We actually don't even meet Odysseus himself until about 2000 lines into the poem! Several times in the story, you will reach a very suspenseful point in one plot, only to find Homer shifts to the other plot, leaving you hanging for hundreds, perhaps over a thousand lines! It makes you want to scream. As you can tell, Homer was a master of writing. Another important technique Homer used was the epic simile. As you know, a regular simile is a comparison using "like" or "as" (generally)—such as: he was as ugly as N'SYNC. An epic simile, however, uses "as"…"so"… An example would be: 

As a child is happy when he opens his Christmas presents and finds a copy of Paul Korte's latest book, so was Johnny happy as he saw his Wife walk up the drive way after her vacation to Orlando, Florida. 

All in all, Homer was awesome. I hope you're starting to see why I call him the greatest of the Greeks. Make sure that you get to your bookstore or library and get a copy of some of Homer's works. 

All material Copyright 2002 by Paul Korte