112 pages • 3 hours read
Homer, Transl. Emily WilsonThe Odyssey
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Reciprocity as Virtue and Obligation
The Odyssey is not only an entertaining story; it is also a didactic text meant to teach its audiences about proper human conduct among mortals and in relation to the gods. A central characteristic of proper conduct is reciprocity. Every relationship in the poem—between god and mortal, host and guest, husband and wife, father and son—involves a give and take of some kind. Every gift anticipates a return in kind, and exchanges are often highly ritualized.
A recurring example is the guest-host relationship. A pattern emerges when guests arrive in a foreign land. Hosts offer a bath, food, and shelter; after guests’ basic needs have been met, hosts ask guests who they are, who their parents are, and where they are from. Guests take what is necessary but do not overstay their welcome or take advantage of their hosts’ generosity. By adhering properly to this ritual, guests and hosts form bonds and alliances that carry into future generations. In a world where travel may be necessary and the unknown dangerous, guest-host relationships provide the promise of a safe landing place.
The Odyssey provides numerous examples of proper and improper hospitality. Examples of proper observation include Nestor and Menelaus welcoming Telemachus, the Phaeacians hosting Odysseus, and Eumaeus and Telemachus caring for Odysseus in disguise. The poem also depicts inversions of hospitality rules and shows the negative consequences that can ensue.
The suitors are guilty of the most persistent violations across the poem, and all die violently as a result. They feast on their host’s wealth but offer no gifts in return. It is not until Penelope chastises them for attempting to court her with empty hands that they present gifts. They abuse their host’s guest (the disguised Odysseus) and plot to kill their host himself (Telemachus). Polyphemus also inverts the rules of hospitality, immediately demanding to know who the men in his cave are and proceeding to eat them rather than offer them meals.
Reciprocity also characterizes the relationship between mortals and immortals. Characters in the poem are repeatedly depicted making sacrifices and offering libations to the gods, again in ritualized form. Prayers to the gods, in this context, are not simply requests; mortal prayers to gods involve both requests and offerings. As with the guest-host relationship, reciprocity may be delayed, but it exists as a promise. Odysseus wanders for 10 years before Zeus and Athena intervene to ensure his return. Zeus acknowledges that he values Odysseus for his history of excellent sacrifices as well as his good sense.
Gods can deny requests even when offerings are made, possibly because of fate’s dictates but often because bad behavior or improper ritual taint the gift. This is especially evident when Odysseus’s men slaughter the Sun God’s cattle despite repeated warnings not to do so. To mitigate their violation, they sacrifice the best one to the gods, but they do not have the proper materials. Lacking wine for libations and barley for the sacrifice, they substitute water and tree leaves, perverting the ritual. The Sun God complains to Zeus, threatening to “sink down into Hades” and shine his “bright light only on the dead” (313), prompting Zeus to assure him that the men who killed his cattle will be punished.
Intersection of Fate, the Gods, and Human Choices
Characters in the Odyssey repeatedly invoke both fate or the gods and their own choices as sources of their troubles or successes. This can seem paradoxical. Fate conceptually assumes inviolability. If Odysseus is fated to return home, the assumption is that, no matter what he does, his fate will be fulfilled. The poem complicates this seemingly simple division, showing how all three—fate, gods, human choices—impact the course of events.
Understanding this apparent paradox rests in what the poem promotes as humans’ central responsibilities: accepting what the gods give them, respecting the gods’ laws, maintaining a sense of proportion, and practicing self-restraint.
Odysseus often fulfills these responsibilities. The poem repeatedly depicts him considering his options and selecting the best one. When he encounters Nausicaa, he wisely determines that grasping her knees might frighten her and keeps his distance, declaring himself a suppliant with words rather than gestures. When offered immortality and endless youth, he gently declines, preferring to uphold his mortal identity and return to Ithaca, accepting that he will have to suffer to do so. When he returns home, he keeps his identity hidden, taking the time to determine who in the household is loyal and can be trusted, and he spares the bard Phemius and the loyal slave Medon. When Athena commands him to stop fighting, he immediately puts down his weapons. Odysseus’s fate is to return home, but his good decisions—when he makes them—endear him to Zeus and Athena, who can make his journey more or less difficult.
Odysseus does not always make good decisions, however, and his mistakes are costly. His two most egregious errors occur during his encounter with Polyphemus. When Odysseus and his men first arrive at Polyphemus’s cave, his men want to raid and run, but Odysseus hopes to establish a guest-friendship and insists they stay. Besides exemplifying the danger of foreign lands, the episode demonstrates Odysseus seeking glory over safety: A guest-friendship would signify another alliance, gifts of treasure, and renown, while a raid would provide provisions but nothing lasting. Odysseus’s decision costs six of his crewmen their lives.
More serious is the boast that Odysseus cannot resist uttering after he and his men escape Polyphemus’s cave. His crewmen beg him to calm down, but his rage is beyond control. He identifies himself to the Sea God Poseidon’s son at the moment he is attempting to escape by sea. This allows Polyphemus to mark him for suffering. Polyphemus asks Poseidon to prevent Odysseus from returning home, but if “it is / fated that he will see his family, / then let him get there late and with no honor, / in pain and lacking ships, and having caused / the death of all his men, and let him find / more trouble in his own house” (257). Poseidon grants his son’s request. Odysseus and his men suffer during their journey. Only Odysseus makes it home alive, and he finds “more trouble” at home (257). The presumption is that at least some of these troubles could have been avoided if he had not revealed his identity to Polyphemus.
According to Odysseus, he is not the only one whose mistakes cost lives. In the story he tells the Phaeacians, he describes his crewmen opening the bag of winds Aeolus gave Odysseus because they suspected him of hoarding treasure. Their ship is promptly blown off course just as they are about to land on Ithaca because they did not trust their leader. Odysseus also claims to have repeatedly warned his men not to eat Helius’s sacred cattle, but his men ignore the warnings. They die at sea in a storm sent by Zeus. Odysseus, the only one who did not eat the cattle, alone survives.
Though the poem links proper behavior with good outcomes, it also recognizes instances of unavoidable bad fate. In these instances, the poem suggests, acceptance is the appropriate response. Telemachus obliquely reminds Penelope of this when she grieves while listening to Phemius sing about Athena cursing the Greeks’ returns: “Odysseus was not the only one / who did not come back home again from Troy. / Many were lost” (116). The Phaeacians also demonstrate it when they see their ship turned to stone just as it enters the harbor after dropping off Odysseus. They were aware of a prophecy that said they would one day be punished for their gift of intuitive ships. When that day arrives, their response is to make offerings to Poseidon, to demonstrate their acceptance and attempt to placate him rather than incur further wrath. Eumaeus also exemplifies this approach, transforming grief and suffering into a source of joy: storytelling. To resist the gods and fate is a futile exercise, but human choices can make that fate more or less tolerable.
Importance of Home and Family
In the Homeric world, lineage, family, and place of origin are central identity factors, and the household is the primary unit. The importance of family and place is attested throughout the Odyssey by the questions repeatedly asked of travelers: Who are you, who is your family, where are you from? When Odysseus wants Polyphemus to know who blinded him, he declares that it was Odysseus, “Laertes’s son, who lives in Ithaca” (256). While household structure is patriarchal, the poem emphasizes that harmonious functioning depends on every member being of one mind.
Penelope and Odysseus’s characters mirror each other. Both are capable of schemes and lies that advance their agenda, and that agenda is singular: reunion. Their union is the marital ideal in the Homeric world. As the narrator reports Odysseus’s telling Nausicaa, “nothing could be better than when two / live in one house, their minds in harmony, / husband and wife. Their enemies are jealous, / their friends delighted, and they have great honor” (203). His words become a prophecy fulfilled as much because of Penelope’s patience and resilience as his own.
Odysseus’s successful return home also could not be secured without the loyalty of the enslaved members of the household, male and female. When Medon overhears the suitors’ plot to murder Telemachus, he immediately delivers the information to Penelope. Eurycleia keeps Odysseus’s return secret, following his instructions to secure the women’s quarters. Eumaeus and Philoetius fight the suitors alongside Odysseus and Telemachus. These contributions enable Odysseus’s defeat of the suitors. Even Athena’s essential assistance can be read as divine approval of a properly functioning household.
