The Odyssey

Where the Iliad is a war poem, the Odyssey is a homecoming poem — and everything that makes the homecoming impossible to achieve cleanly. Odysseus, "the man of many ways," has been trying to get back to Ithaca for ten years after the fall of Troy. Gods obstruct him, monsters delay him, beautiful women offer him immortality if he'll stay. He keeps leaving. Not because he is faithful (he is demonstrably not) but because he cannot bear not to be home.

The Odyssey invented a narrative structure that still governs fiction: the journey as self-knowledge. Every island Odysseus reaches is a test not of strength but of character — whether he will yield to oblivion (the Lotus Eaters), to power (Circe), to death (the land of the dead), to grief (the Sirens who sing of everything he's lost). The monsters are psychological as much as physical, and the trials are specifically designed to make a clever, acquisitive, unfaithful man either become something better or not go home at all.

It is also funnier and more domestic than the Iliad. Odysseus meets a Cyclops and solves the problem with wordplay and wine. His dog Argos, who waited twenty years for his master, dies the moment Odysseus returns — and the passage lasts twelve lines but lands with the weight of a year. The poem is in love with ordinary life: fire, bread, a good chair, a well-made bed. After ten years of war and ten years of wandering, those are the things Odysseus wants.

Odysseus — The Greek hero least heroic in the traditional sense. He does not excel at straightforward violence; he excels at lying, disguising, planning, enduring humiliation. He is explicitly described as knowing the minds of many peoples and many cities. The poem is the story of a man too clever for the world he comes from learning to use that cleverness wisely.

Penelope — Odysseus' wife, who has spent twenty years holding off a hundred suitors competing for her hand and the kingdom. Her patience is not passivity; she is as clever as her husband, delaying through deception (the famous unraveling of the shroud). Her recognition of Odysseus at the end is the poem's emotional climax.

Telemachus — Odysseus' son, who has grown up without a father and begins the poem uncertain, almost paralyzed. His journey — to find news of his father — runs parallel to Odysseus' journey home. He arrives at himself by the time his father arrives at Ithaca.

Athena — The goddess who protects Odysseus, essentially his divine partner. Her favoritism of him over the other gods gives the poem its theological argument: cleverness, adaptability, and endurance are qualities the gods reward.

No. 1 · The Cyclops (Book IX). Odysseus and his men are trapped in the cave of Polyphemus, a Cyclops who eats two men per meal. Odysseus gets him drunk, blinds him with a sharpened stake, and escapes by hiding under the Cyclops' sheep. His solution to giving his name — "Nobody" — means when Polyphemus calls for help ("Nobody is hurting me!"), his neighbors don't come. The whole sequence is a demonstration of the poem's central idea: brains over force, at genuine cost.

No. 2 · The land of the dead (Book XI). Odysseus descends to the underworld and speaks with the shades of the dead, including Achilles — who tells him that he would rather be alive as the meanest slave than dead and great. This is the Iliad's hero revising his choice from the other side of it. The Odyssey is answering the Iliad's question about kleos, and its answer is: home.

No. 3 · The recognition of the bed (Book XXIII). When Odysseus finally reveals himself to Penelope, she devises one last test: she tells a servant to move their marriage bed. Odysseus erupts — the bed cannot be moved; he built it himself around a living olive tree that forms one of its posts. Only Odysseus could know this. The test works, and the reunion scene that follows is the poem's most quietly overwhelming moment.

Emily Wilson (W.W. Norton, 2017) — The first English translation by a woman, and the best modern version available. Wilson's choices are precise and argued carefully; her introduction is required reading for understanding what every other translation has quietly adjusted. She renders the poem line-for-line, without padding.

Robert Fagles (Penguin, 1996) — More expansive and dramatic than Wilson; excellent for readers who want the poem to feel like a performance. His introductory essay by Bernard Knox is valuable.

Richmond Lattimore (Harper, 1965) — The scholar's choice; preserves the repetitions and formulae more faithfully than either Wilson or Fagles.

Audiobook: The Emily Wilson translation is available in an audiobook read by Claire Danes (Penguin Audio, 2018) — excellent, particularly for the domestic and emotional scenes.

The Odyssey is more accessible than the Iliad — the narrative is driven by episodes with clear goals (get home), the hero is more recognizably modern (a liar and a planner rather than a warrior), and the poem's range includes genuine comedy alongside the pathos. It is a better starting point for readers new to Homer.

It is not for readers expecting a straightforward adventure story. The episodes are not equally weighted; some islands matter more than others; the second half (the return to Ithaca, the suitors, the recognition) is slower and more interior than the island-hopping first half. The violence of the suitors' slaughter at the end is deliberate and excessive in ways that can unsettle modern readers — the poem knows this.

Read it in order, but pay particular attention to the structural choices: the poem begins not with Odysseus but with Telemachus, and Odysseus himself doesn't appear until Book V. This is deliberate; Homer wants you to understand what his absence has cost before you meet him. The Telemachy (Books I–IV) is essential context.

Notice the hospitality scenes — xenia, the obligation of host to guest, is a recurring structural theme. Almost every important encounter involves food and a bed. The suitors' violation of xenia is what makes their destruction not just narratively satisfying but morally justified within the poem's world.

• Homer — The Iliad. The preceding poem in the tradition; the two are designed to be read together, and the Odyssey is partly arguing against the Iliad's values.
• James Joyce — Ulysses (1922). The modern retelling — Odysseus' journey compressed into a single day in Dublin. Joyce's novel makes no sense without the Odyssey, and the Odyssey looks different once you've read Joyce.
• Margaret Atwood — The Penelopiad (2005). Penelope's version of events, including what the maids hanged at the poem's end had to say about it.

1. Odysseus lies fluently throughout the poem, even to people helping him. Does the poem endorse this, condemn it, or simply treat it as his nature?
2. Penelope waits twenty years and is celebrated for it. What exactly is she doing during those years — patience or something more active?
3. The Odyssey and the Iliad offer different answers about what makes a life worth living. How would you characterize each poem's argument?
4. Every island tempts Odysseus to stay — Calypso even offers immortality. Why does he consistently refuse? Is the poem's answer to this question satisfying?
5. The slaughter of the suitors (and the maids) at the poem's end is depicted as justified. Does the poem give you enough to agree? What does the excess of the violence suggest?
6. Telemachus begins the poem uncertain and ends it fighting alongside his father. What has he learned, and from whom?