Home, Exile, and Return

The Theme in the Work

The Odyssey is the poem of return, and return is measured by the house that awaits. The proem asks the Muse for the man who wandered far after sacking Troy (Book I). When the story begins, all the survivors of the war have already come home, except Odysseus, held on the island of Calypso, and what he desires is little: to see at least the smoke rising from his own land, and without it he wants to die.

The house that awaits is occupied. In Book I, the suitors eat Odysseus's livelihood without paying, and Telemachus imagines his father arriving to drive them out. In Book II, he calls the assembly, throws the scepter to the ground and weeps. In Book XVI, he imagines his father's bed covered with cobwebs, if his mother has already married again.

Exile has faces. In Book V, Calypso offers immortality, and Odysseus concedes that Penelope is mortal and inferior in appearance, but says he wants, every day, to return and see the day of homecoming. In Book IX, he tells the Phaeacians that Ithaca is harsh and that he sees no sweeter land, and says that the lotus-eaters offer a fruit that makes one forget the return, and that he drags back to the ships those who have tasted it. In Book X, Circe keeps him for a year, until the companions remind him of the homeland.

The return fails close to home. In Book X, Odysseus sights the fires of the homeland on the tenth day, falls asleep, and the companions open the bag of winds, which carries them back. In Book XII, the companions kill the cattle of the Sun while he sleeps, and Zeus destroys the ship. In Book XI, Tiresias had already said that, if he escapes, he will return late, without companions and in a foreign ship, and will find misery at home.

The return is not an arrival. Odysseus disembarks asleep, does not recognize the land and counts his gifts before weeping for his homeland (Book XIII). He enters his own house as a beggar and recovers it through proofs, the bow, the scar, the bed, which make him master without his having to ask. Even after the bed, he warns Penelope that one last journey remains, the journey of the oar that Tiresias announced (Book XXIII), and the peace of Ithaca is decreed by Athena and by Zeus, not by the families (Book XXIV). Ithaca is a stop, not a rest.

Where It Appears

• Book I: Athena tells Zeus that Odysseus, held on Calypso's island, wants at least to see the smoke rising from his land and, without it, wants to die, and the gods decide the return.
• Book V: Calypso offers immortality, and Odysseus, who acknowledges Penelope as inferior in appearance, answers that he wants every day to return home and see the day of homecoming.
• Book IX: Odysseus tells the Phaeacians that Ithaca is harsh, but that nothing is sweeter than the homeland, and says that the lotus-eaters offer a fruit that erases the desire to return.
• Book X: The fires of Ithaca come into sight on the tenth day of the voyage, but Odysseus sleeps, the companions open the bag of winds and the storm carries them back.
• Book XI: In the descent to the dead, Tiresias announces that the return will be hard and that Odysseus will return late, without companions and on a foreign ship, and will find misery at home.
• Book XIII: The Phaeacians leave Odysseus sleeping on the beach of Ithaca, and he wakes without recognizing the land, because Athena poured mist over him to postpone recognition.
• Book XVI: Telemachus tells Eumaeus that he came to learn whether his mother is still in the house, and imagines his father's bed covered with cobwebs.
• Book XVII: At the palace door, the dog Argos recognizes Odysseus after twenty years, and the hero, disguised as a beggar, can only wipe away a tear in secret.
• Book XXIII: Penelope recognizes her husband by the description of the bed built around the olive tree, and Odysseus warns that one last trial remains, announced by Tiresias.
• Book XXIV: Odysseus meets Laertes in the orchard, is recognized by the scar and by the trees his father gave him, and the fight with the Ithacans ends only when Athena establishes the pact.

Passages

Athena reminds Zeus of Odysseus's minimal desire.

Calypso offers immortality, and Odysseus grants the premise and rejects the conclusion.

Ithaca is poor, and the hero does not trade it for any other land.

Odysseus wakes in Ithaca without knowing where he is, and the narrator says why.

Penelope recognizes her husband, and the poem compares her relief to that of a castaway who sights land.

That same night, he warns that the return still has one last trial.