It’s been a journey. (If you’re looking for my four-star review it’s here)
After ten years laying siege to Troy, it takes Odysseus another decade to get home, to a palace where his wife and son have also in a way been besieged, though this time by a range of unwelcome suitors making the most of a country left without a king.
Odysseus alone returns to Ithaca, his men all killed by gods and monsters on the journey, and he is warned that before he makes it home he must visit Hades itself.
There he is chased away by his own dead, angry soldiers.
Eventually Odysseus washes up alone amid the wreckage of one of his ships, on the island of Ogygia, where Calypso tends him for seven years, feeding him lotus flowers to make him forget his men and his home. Eventually even she realises he needs to complete his journey; but first he must face up to his own behaviour and pride, and the price his men paid for his actions.
Once Odysseus accepts this he builds a raft and lies down on it, leaving his fate to the gods, and is washed towards Ithaca, where he lands. He travels to the Temple of Athena and saves the visiting Telemachus from assassins sent by Antinous. Odysseus does not, however, reveal himself to his son – he is dressed as a hooded beggar.
They return to his palace, and Telemachus finally realises the beggar is his father when Odysseus’s dog Argos briefly recognises his returned master before dying, at peace at last.
My conscience after I’ve stuffed half the hotel breakfast buffet up my sleeves to have for lunch later
Inside the palace Odysseus watches Penelope’s suitors feast, and he himself is mocked and abused as a beggar, in contravention of Zeus’s Law which determines that every visitor must be treated well lest they be a god in disguise. Privately, without telling his queen who he really is, he explains to her what he has done in battle: sacking Troy, abusing Zeus’s Law and helping to bring the curtain down on the Bronze Age.
Penelope, who has been betrayed by her handmaiden over her nightly unravelled weaving, tells her suitors that she is finally ready to take a new husband, and will marry whoever can string Odysseus’s bow and then shoot an arrow through a row of axes. Other weapons are locked away ahead of this competition.
Many try but none succeed to string the bow, and Antinous becomes fed up with such games. However “the beggar” tries and is successful at the task. Revealing himself to be Odysseus, a fight breaks out. The weapons are retrieved by Antinous and his cohort, though Odysseus and his supporters eventually triumph, and Antinous is killed.
Odysseus is dangerously wounded with arrows. However, he does recover, as the last scenes see him and his Queen Penelope boarding their ships to sail away, leaving the newly crowned Telemachus as King of Ithaca, a new king for a new era.
Odysseus has accepted his own role in the horrors of Troy and the turbulence now afflicting the societies he knows, but he still has to find a way to continue. That cannot mean returning to his throne; instead he gives up the crown to Telemachus. He had already promised he would sail West to honour his men who all fell on his great quest, and now he aims to fulfil that promise with his beloved wife by his side.
(An alternative reading might be that the very badly injured Odysseus – he looks to have three arrows stuck in him – does die at the climax of the battle with the suitors in the palace, and him sailing away is his own journey to the underworld, though that doesn’t explain Penelope being there.)
Leave a Reply