Cavanaugh Nods

At Reason's Hit & Run, Tim Cavanaugh discusses outmoded forms of communication, like books. In passing, he discusses the Odyssey:

Did you know, for example, that only about half of the Odyssey is about Odysseus' wanderings, and the rest is taken up with killing the suitors and a bone-dull coda in which Odysseus works out a compensation package for the mentally anguished families of the suitors?

Heck, it's worse than that. The Odyssey is divided into 24 books, and the first 4 aren't even about Odysseus. They follow his son around instead. And what everyone thinks the epic is about--his wild journey home from the Trojan War--is pretty much all in books 9 through 12.

But that's Homer's style. These epics were done as performance pieces. (And it couldn't all be performed in one sitting, which is why you get repetitions and recaps.) Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are about ten-year stories, but they start near the end and actually only take place over a short period of time, with backstory filled in when needed.

The Odyssey starts with its hero held captive on Calypso's island, ten years after the Trojan War, still hoping to return to his wife Penelope in Ithaca. After we get past the stuff with his son Telemachus, he gets off the island and makes it as far as Phaeacia, where he meets the Princess and later the Queen and King. He's set to leave, but before he goes he tells the story of his voyages.

The first 12 books are highly entertaining, but all the while, in the back of the listener's mind, is what will Odysseus do when he finally returns. His kingdom in shambles, his wife besieged by suitors, his father grieving, his son the target of a murder plot, he's got a lot to deal with.

So once he returns, Homer takes a long time paying off. Wily Odysseus can't just march into his palace and reclaim it. He's gotta figure out how to get his house back in order. And the audience is waiting for all sorts of reunion scenes--above all the moment Odysseus reveals himself to Penelope. Homer stretches this out almost to the breaking point. It's not till book 23, after Odysseus has slaughtered the suitors, that he finally comes clean.

The main action is over but Homer now ties up loose ends--including dealing with the dead, important to Greeks--and winds down the story.

In the final book of the Iliad, the main battles are over and Achilles has killed Hector. Now a disguised King Priam sneaks into Achilles' tent at night and begs for his son's body. Meanwhile, Achilles has been thinking of his lost friend Patroclus. He's given up everything for glory. Was it worth it? This whole epic, born of Achilles' wrath, leads up to this scene of two men, mortal enemies, weeping in grief. Priam brings the body back and though most of the epic concentrates on the Greeks, we end with Hector receiving a proper funeral.

The Odyssey's final book starts with the suitors going to the underworld, where they meet, among others, Achilles, and talk about funerals and glorious death--better to die in battle than like a punk at home, which happened to Agamemnon. (The story of Odysseus is a parallel to Agamemnon--who shows how not to return home.) Back in Ithaca, Odysseus goes out to find his father, Laertes, still mourning his son. Meanwhile, the suitors' relatives are plotting revenge. The mob comes to the palace and there's a fight, broken up by Athena, the goddess who supports Odysseus, and we end with restoration and in peace. (Athena was also the goddess of Athens, of course, and she intervenes and stops the revenge plot to bring peace in the Oresteia.)

Now I admit the final book of the Odyssey doesn't have the power of the final book of the Iliad (little does). Some scholars have even suggested the Odyssey originally ended with Odysseus and Penelope going happily to bed. But book 24 does tie up some loose ends, both in plot and theme, and, like the Iliad, deals with the aftermath of death--you don't just kill someone and that's the end of it.

On the other hand, if you want to read an epic that falls apart in the second half, check out the Aeneid.